JHK’s Three-Act Play, Big Slide
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…
Visit the Big Slide Page to order, perform, or see sample scenes.

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. Here’s JHK’s holiday classic: A Christmas Orphan.

11-year-old Jeff Greenaway hears his mom and dad argue one night after an office Christmas party. He infers from their garbled squabble that he is an orphan, found in a willow basket on the welcome mat outside their New York apartment. Thinking now that his parents are imposters, he steals away to Grand Central Station and buys a train ticket to Drakesville, Vermont, where he intends to start life all over again.Print | Kindle | Kobo (Digital) | Barnes & Noble (Digital)

I n my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today.

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. Notice that the story has vamoosed utterly from the American media headlines, even when the Russian Engineers’ Union issued a report last week asserting that the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was most likely shot down by 30mm cannon fire from Ukrainian military aircraft. The USA State Department didn’t deign to refute it because doing so would have drawn attention to the fact that it was the only plausible explanation for what happened.

Likewise, the campaign to paint Vladimir Putin as Stalin-in-a-judo-robe never really reached take-off velocity, since by all appearances he was the most rational and cool-headed actor on the geopolitical stage, following logical and long-established national interests. If the West had just left Ukraine alone, and allowed it to join the Eurasian Customs Union, that basket-case nation would have been Russia’s economic ward. Now the US and the EU have to support it with billions in loans that will never be paid back. Meanwhile, our European allies have been snookered into a set of economic and financial sanctions against Russia that guarantees they’ll be starved for oil and gas supplies in the winter months ahead. Smooth move.

So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle.

So, now we’re going to just deal “death from above” on the Black Flaggers across that stretch of their captured territory that runs from Iraq into Syria — violating Syria’s sovereignty in the process, of course. My guess is that such an operation will inspire them to bring the action straight to Europe, the USA, and the grand prize, Saudi Arabia. The movement is too broad now, includes too many psychopaths from all over the world (Europe especially) who hold passports that will enable them to travel easily out of the Middle East and export mayhem wherever they want to bring it.

The USA is stuck within so many pathways of systems criticality in this fall of 2014, that is sure to be expressed in our own internal politics very soon. We’re all set up for a classic state of siege with the Pentagon militarizing every Podunk police department in the land, and one can easily imagine a single IS operation aimed at some soft American target shoving us into hysteria.

While all this is happening, of course, Wall Street and its hand-maidens rev up the engines of malinvestment and bid up false values of things that will do nothing to get us safely into the economy of real things that awaits us. That economy of real things I speak of does not include many of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to — mass motoring, national chain retail, air-conditioning for all, 24/7 electric service — but it’s where we’re going. As reality drags us kicking and screaming toward it, the likelihood of a domestic political convulsion increases. We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.

Finance is the weakest link in the chain of systems that allows us to run the old economy. It’s the system most abstracted from reality and the most easily manipulated into ever-greater abstraction. Hence it’s the system most easily subject to fatal slippage. And all it takes to set off the slipping is a simple loss of faith.

I will be reading, yakking, and mixing with the home folks at theNorthshire Book Shopin Saratoga Springs, New York, this coming Friday September 26 at 7:00 pm

The new World Made By Hand novel
!! Is now available !!

“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

Thank you for this gem of a sentence: “Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)?”

I like that one! So true! Expect a false flag attack by the Mossad posing as radical Islamic fundamentalists before the end of 2014 to pump hysteria for a full scale war for the sole benefit of the Military Industrial Complex.

You sound the most sane of these posts, however, we are a nation of thinkers (although maybe not so many doers), and everyone running around saying “The sky is falling, the sky is falling” are the sheeple, easily led to slaughter. Don’t forget the back of the book, Revelations, and know that In God We Trust is not just a slogan. God has this, and when He is ready, we the thinkers should be ready. Look towards Oct. 8th, 2014 for the start of the US stampede to slaughter, this is the first day of The Feast of Tabernacles, and there will be a “tetrad” (look it up), and also a shemitah (look it up) in which all the earth will see what God has been telling us for centuries in The Word, His love letter to His people, and just keep looking up until the last tetrad on Sept. 28, 15–Joel 2:31 “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood”.
We the sheeple need to decide if we want to be the head, and not the tail.
Cast your care upon the Lord, and always look ahead and up, not down and out.

ISIS may well turn sooner, rather than later, to the “far enemy,” the USA and UK and France and Germany.

I fear–greatly–what an all-out attack on a commencement exercise or football game would do. If you have been to such events recently, you know how easy it would be to slip in and cause a lot of casualties with just a few terrorists. The stampede would kill more people than the initial attack. I’m sure some folks in DHS lose sleep thinking about this.

Coming soon. These evildoers are not stupid. We, sadly, are.

Let’s hope that the Shia will wipe ISIS out. Iran still has some reach and no reason to let ISIS thrive that close to their border.

Helen, oh how correct you are! Remember the talk of the “peace dividend” back when the Soviet Union collapsed? G-d forbid! The beltway bandits all gasped – “my ricebowl, my ricebowl”. So now we have terrorism to worry about. And the best part of terrorism is that the “enemy” can never be declared vanquished. So we had al quaeda. Now we have ISIS. Oh, and don’t forget that crop of “homegrown” terrorists who will surely evidence themselves. So much terror, so little security apparatus. There’s gold in them thar hills. I was just reading that the DHS is having a management crisis. Seems they can’t get enough seasoned managers. Why? Reason given in the article: A senior manager in the DHS can only look forward to $180,000 per year working for the DHS. They can make two or three times that much working for private firms (no doubt with federal contracts). Terrorism is good business, it seems.

Statistically, those texting drivers do have a higher probability of killing you than does some hairball with a scimitar.

When I think of terror attacks on the US, however, it’s not my personal safety that concerns me. It’s the further loss of Constitutional freedoms that I fear.

I disagree with something you imply, since I think ISIS to be a real threat and not some invention of the military-industrial-lobbyist complex. Yet we probably agree that a bigger threat would be “Patriot Act 3.0” (or what have you) after another big terrorist attack on US soil.

The texting-and-selfie public, sheep that they are, would again back such a curtailing of personal liberties as long as they don’t affect their data plans.

Smoky, I didn’t mean to imply that ISIS is an invention of or inspired by the military-industrial-complex. That said, I can fairly safely opine that ISIS emergence is seen more as opportunity than as a threat. Whether this translated into specific nefarious action, or more likely inaction is of course speculative. Possible? Consider the qualities of our leadership before you hastily answer that question. the populace is feckless, as you readily assert, why would our leaders be any less so? Nevertheless, this is yet one more result of the financialization of our culture. Rather similar to what is happening with the prison system being privatized. And I certainly agree with you regarding our freedoms being incrementally abridged in the name of security. This is another example (metaphorically) of saving the village by bombing it.

I always find this obsession with foreign terrorists amusing!
The gun-crazed USA already has a terrorist attack about once a month from Columbine to the Newtown school massacre to attack weapons at fast food joints to mass murders even at churches.
There have been 74 gun shootings in the US since Newtown:

As usual as the endless Wars are about profits for the Merchants of Death in the interests of the Oil companies and other Corporations profit, so gun shootings are about the domestic merchants of death…

i’ll buck popular opinion and say I’m with ya kiwi. and correct me if I’m wrong(like I need to say that here) but wasn’t the second amendment written at a time when our country didn’t have a defense budget of $700 billion a year? that figure came from the book “Washington Rules” by Andrew Bacevich pg.25 and we need to stop using that euphemism. It’s not a defense budget it’s an offensive budget(pun intended)

kiwi, I would ask if there’s a point where my rights end and the common good begins. can I own a howitzer to defend my property? I mean how much destructive power does an individual have a right to possess? I think it all comes from paranoia. the land of the free has become the land of the very afraid

What do you think the world will do when it finds out Saudi Arabia is lying about their reserves? You think a world of petroleum addicts is going to take kindly to the dealer who has none? The rage will be colossal, the response biblical, since after all Islam would have won. They led us by the hand, presidents included, to this horrifying place where exactly what we need is gone, and we’re up a creek without a paddle, floating towards a waterfall. And it won’t be limited to just Saudi Arabia. Remember what they did to Mussolini?

It does seem the Globalism experiment has run out of talent, but that is normal for left wing kook social experiments that are not rigorously policed like the Bolshevik revolution, but maybe that is coming, so I might be wrong. If you start hearing of Daily Kos kooks being arrested, thrown in prison and being shanked then maybe the grand social experiment of creating global prole culture is back on track.

None of this discipline will come from the Right in America, a completely spent force of crooks in their own right.

“That economy of real things I speak of does not include many of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to — mass motoring, national chain retail, air-conditioning for all, 24/7 electric service — but it’s where we’re going.”

I like that list better than the one I recite when I show the slide introducing you to my classes as an example of a someone who follows ecological economic models that they will encounter later in the class, when I show “The End of Suburbia. It’s the cartoon of you pointing to an empty oil barrel with a house, a car, and a motorcycle all in the air and how it represents all the things that will start going away once peak oil hits. Here’s to remembering them when I give that lecture next semester.

The new, new lunatics in the ME seem to be pretty smart in some fashion. Look what they did in Australia, created a panic with a few emails to some retarded mopes about chopping heads not of civilians but of State flunkies, then the over reaction which will create more retarded moon worshippers, rinse, repeat.

Now imagine this happening in Britain? What a recruiting pool they have there, unemployed muslim chavs with no hope of finding employment in the feminized work force of the new great Britain.

Maybe the Left can police these mopes with a campaign of “Don’t Rape.” I doubt it.

Not looking good, is it? If I understand the situation correctly, we will wind up being against both sides of the civil war in Syria. We are, of course, totally against the Bashar al-Assad government. But we intend to support rebel forces opposing such government – of which ISIS is one.

Oh, but we won’t support excessively nasty rebel groups like ISIS – we only want to support nice, moderate rebel forces who will no doubt swear to always be nice and moderate.

It is difficult to even try to say that out loud – the phrase simply sounds too much like lunacy – which of course it is. Guaranteed fail.

The sitch has never looked good in this decaying cuntry, hasn’t since I was a lil kid in the late 60’s with images of Viet Nam on the tele. Another bullshit story concocted to start a profitable war and drug import business. Sure, we’ll be “against” both sides….while we Arm, Train, Advise, Support and Finance both sides from behind the star-spangled curtain…as per usual. This playbook is rote by now, and still the sheeple don’t get it. They still think “the news” is real.

If people think that we don’t or won’t support ISIS – bwuahahahahaha! Sorry, was that a tad too sarcastic? We Created ISIS, just like we created (in Bushian accent) Al Qeusadilla, them there Messican Terrishts – by financing, arming, etc. Remember Viet Nam? the Sandinistas? Iran-Contra? Pinochet’s death squads? Noriega? Same game then. …yawn…. It’s a big dumb game for big dumb fucks in big dumb trucks, AKA; Mercans. They buy the hype and fear that’s fed at the digital trough of idiocy. We’re way more likely to be shot by ‘officer Friendly’ than any jihadist from the ME. None of the ‘news’ stacks up if you ask the right questions.

So the Russian Engineers Union sez it was a 30mm cannon shot that brought the plane down. Well then, that’s gottda be it. And those conversations amongst the rebs that sure sound like it was their missile? CIA disinformation doubtless. And those shots of fuselage with punctures consist with an exploding missile? Don’t ask.

Well what exactly are your credentials other than being an obvious idiot who wants to believe the “separatists” had some reason to shoot down that plane with all those women and children on board. It follows the same pattern of Nazi like callous disregard for innocent human lives that these terrorists have shown when they launch airstrikes and artillery at schools, hospitals, and civilian areas. They run when they are confronted by the “insurgent” militias, who last I heard were on the offensive and cleaning up on those bums, who are forced to enlist by that fat, pig faced bastard oligarch Poroshenko at the threat of death.

That aside, the official Malaysian press blames the neo Nazis in Kiev and their su-25 fighter jets. Ron Paul noticed the deafening silence from the neocons back here on this deliberate, raw act of terrorism. “They are hiding something”. Then take into account one of the first of an international team on the scene ……both sides “pockmarked” from “intense machine gun fire”. Go on and hallucinate that being shrapnel from a BUK missile. cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-mh17-michael-bociurkiw-talks-abou t-being-first-at-the-crash-site-1.2721007

Why are the conversations between air traffic control and the doomed passenger jet not being revealed to the public? And by the way, these supposed conversations between the “rebels” have been proven to have been created a full day before the plane actually went down. Do your homework before you run at the mouth and make yourself look foolish. If and when the truth is ever allowed to come out on this, the liars, apologists, and especially those fuckers in Kiev will have a lot to answer for

That is totally ridiculous. The SU-25 is not a fighter jet. It is a ground support aircraft. It has a ceiling of 22,000 ft. Way lower than most commercial aircrafts’ cruising altitude.

All of these are baseless allegations with no hard evidence, just suggestions of shadowy conspiracies to “make Russia look bad.” Why not go with the simpler, less convoluted explanation that is “Russia IS bad.”

This is starting to sound like the courtroom defense of a serial car thief I heard about. “Your honor, he was happened to be there right after the car windows got shattered. There is no video of him actually doing it, just hearsay by the cops who were following him. Could have been someone else.”

Boys! Stop arguing. It’ll all be solved once the US shows those satellite photos that WE KNOW THEY HAVE, that shows that SIX-MILE plume to the airliner from the BUK truck… that without its supporting 3 (minimum) radar vehicles couldn’t hit a barn from the inside. And where is “Carlos”, the Spanish AT controller at Borispol airport who furiously tweeted about the Ukie military knowing about the shoot-down BEFORE it happened? He’s missing. How can people be so f#@*ing gullible? I’ve seen this movie before. It was called, um, WMDs, no, Gulf of Tonkin, wait, ah, Lusitania, no, ah, “American blood shed on American soil”… hell, just wait for the remake.

The BUK has two modes of operation, one is with its supporting radar trucks and full IFF.

The other is an emergency mode, this was designed to stop the tactic of overwhelming an AA launcher with multiple targets (drones for obvious reasons) that the Isreali’s used to great success when facing older Russia AA missiles. In this case the BUK can fire independently of its radar truck at something (which in this case would be unable to track so many targets).

It is likely that mode that was used, videos were made of BUK launchers driving around rebel areas (one was missing two missiles even). And they did also shoot down a Ukrainian military cargo plane that was at 20,000ft just a week earlier, likely again with the BUK as nothing else would have reached it.

Hitting a jumbo jet would be almost a certainty for a BUK, they are big, slow, and very easy to track. A SU-25 just cannot get that high, only the latest Russian ones can barely touch 20k and they were not exported, more likely the jumbo would then outrun it!

The Ukrainians do have jets that can go that high, but since only two Mig-25’s are upgraded the rest are likely very poor condition, I’m surprised though that the conspiracy theory does not name them.

The simplest explanation here is an idiot firing it really screwed up by just shooting at something (and the rebels did briefly claim to have shot something down), one day Russia will have to answer for this crime, they had no business supplying the rebels to start with, and recklessly giving them advanced weaponry caused this.

“Wall Street and its hand-maidens rev up the engines of malinvestment and bid up false values of things that will do nothing to get us safely into the economy of real things that awaits us. “”Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix” Those to concepts say it all to me. As an example witness the mutant robot mass hysteria of long lines waiting to buy the new gegaw from apple, the i phone 6. Ten million so far of the idiots trying to escape reality now matter how much it costs.

i prefer the psychoanalysis of our car warrior culture as opposed to isisorussia warriors.

basically, the tat people are mostly the children of the town fathers – govt. in general. i do not know how many rolled up sleeves in wash d.c. will reveal a history of drunken nights and dead end romantic fantasies. maybe more than we think. the question is…is there any kind of productive dialogue between the two american groups? mostly it has resorted to a guy walking down wallstreet being mugged by a hooded figure whom had stole the money legally earlier that day when the hoodie had to pay hundred time mark up on his cigs and cheetos. everything was caught on camera, of course, even the town meetings populated by people who are all retired white property owners or foreign investors and are more than happy to overlook the deteriorating conditions of their rentier utopias for the sake of increased profits and to make low income people look even worse than they already are looking. and who else has time for town meetings with three jobs, kids and six term papers to write? really, who is the system designed to serve?

and then you have the middle class…which is psychologically reflecting the middle east. they want some kind of perverted justice wherein violently holding onto every vestige of their way of life or belief system is okay. 4000 lives down the hole is fine and justified and rewarded by their chosen deity. sick people!!! all around.

so the scenery for this act of the story in energy shuffling is being propped up by diplomatic efforts to rid the world of those behaving badly. no soup for you!

how are the danes dealing with the loss now and have they come to a satisfactory conclusion or have they done what the Malaysians have and turned on the ones in charge? demanding satisfaction? no, because they have their wreckage and story.

what other stories will come down the pipe that will try to effect how trade is conducted in all sectors? that is ramping up in the pivotal years of peak oil (2014-2016) there are 4 horizontal wells being drilled every week here in the southwest. construction is booming, workers are pooring in and consuming more. systems of delivery and distribution are stressed to the max and govt is making deals right and left to sustain the american way of life. i can see this going on for another twenty years. however, i do not see the next generation getting much out of any of this activity psychosocially that does not involve immediate gratification in the turn styles of mega fastfood joints and social media all you can eat drink cafes.

“You have the middle class…which is psychologically reflecting the middle east. they want some kind of perverted justice wherein violently holding onto every vestige of their way of life or belief system is okay.”

There was something always niggling at the back of my mind about the various degrees of Anti-Muslim hate speech coming through the web-o-sphere and I think you nailed it. The mentality of extremesits on both sides is identical: “If anyone tells me I can’t live the way I want to, I’ll kill ’em. There isn’t a hell deep enough.”

Karah: I hope you have a blog. I really like the way you express your thoughts as I like the way JK does. If so please post the blog address if you do. I doubt if JK will mind at least I hope he doesn’t.

i think it is in bad taste to promote oneself using other peoples promotion campaigns.

i really do not care what jhk thinks about it, its his blog and he decided to allow open comment season.

now he has extra work to do moderating his image…and he is not very successful and neither is anyone who self publishes that is why publishers hire agents to represent themselves to various groups.

blogs are informal, narcissistic and riddled with pitfalls in their architecture. why would i want to subject you guys to another registration process? this comment form of writing is like tennis and jhks is like paintball art. its cool but it gets to be purposeless and ugly after a time. how many times does he have to call someone stupid and it stop being funny?

campaign (verb) work in an organized and active way toward a particular goal, typically a political or social one.
“people who campaigned against child labor”
synonyms: crusade, fight, battle, push, press, strive, struggle, lobby
“they are campaigning for political reform”

it is obvious this site primarily promotes jhk professional books and views and nobody else. his goal is to sell his books and write well. part of writing is bouncing your ideas off of people.
some stuff sticks, other stuff does not.

barbarism
1.
absence of culture and civilization.
“the collapse of civilization and the return to barbarism”
plural noun: barbarisms
2.
extreme cruelty or brutality.
“she called the execution an act of barbarism”

stupidism (urban dictionary)
To make fun of someone because of there lack of smartness
EX1: Richard is dumb he can’t row a boat

EX2: Simon is dumb he can’t make a burn to me!
by Coney Jung May 30, 2005

i think most readers know what are real words.
i wanted to clarify the usage of certain words because we all use them slightly differently.

Last week ISIS captured 60 more towns and villages in Kurdistan, and at this moment 130,000 Kurdish refugees are walking thru the desert making haste for sanctuary at the Turkish border. Last I heard this morning Turkey is closing its border and no longer accepting these people. What will happen to them is an open question. Maybe the’ll just die out there in the desert.

Isn’t it these Kurds Obama is counting on to serve as our infantry to fight this ISIS army?

Yes, current American foreign policy is a circle-jerk of enormous scale and byzantine complexity. Still, my candidate for the single-most disastrous international bungle must remain the Vietnam War. We hadn’t a single thing at stake in those distant jungles. The French had been there primarily for the rubber, but, by the mid-fifties, we were making perfectly serviceable tires from petroleum (not to mention our easy access to South American natural rubber). As far as strategic positioning is concerned, we had a multitude of military posts throughout the southeastern Pacific. We didn’t need Indochina. Hell, there isn’t even oil there!

At the time, oil was not in the equation – at least not overtly. Back then gasoline was all but free. As far a reasons for going to war, there was only some nonsense about ‘strategic positioning’ and the rather silly ‘Domino Theory’ ( i.e., if Vietnam falls will Australia be next? And what about California?)

I know this sounds goofy, but this is the slop we were fed. Of course no one in his right mind bought it, and many of us found ways to avoid the whole mess. But the losses to both the U.S. and Vietnam were horrific. Neither nation has fully recovered.

But no, I didn’t see oil in the picture. It was more of a “MINE IS BIGGER THAN YOUR’S” proxy war – chest thumping to try to cower Russia and China…Sound familiar?

You have to understand it’s existential and economic. War is a good in itself for an economic elite that is eating the Republic from the top down and inside out. Thus with every war, they the profiteers get richer. And the military industrial complex gets stronger. And people get more used to taking orders and not complaining as their rights are taken away. This is laid out in fictional from in Orwell’s 1984. In the “real” world, see “The Report from Iron Mountain”. There always has to be some kind of war on, even if it’s just the war on drugs. War maintains the State. Thus War is Peace.

Once the Globalists triumph completely, they’ll probably focus on dangerous dissidents and the terrible threat they pose.

The lower Elite stopped sending their sons to war after WW2 or Korea. That’s when the Revolution worked itself down to that level. The upper middle class began to stop going in during Vietnam war.

By way of contrast, read about the conflict between Ralph Waldo Emerson and his son. His son didn’t want to go to fight the South. Ralph said “You must”. That his son was right isn’t the point. That he was ordered to go shows a real Nation existed at that point. Thoreau went into prophetic mode and taking the young man aside said, You are like me and love it here. You have to go and you will suffer greatly. But you will return and be happy here again.

Janos, I appreciate your views on this topic and believe that they are widely held. I also understand that all wars have at least some economic components – motives as well as consequences. However, I believe that the scope and power of the ‘upper elite’ was not as pervasive then as it is today, and that, in the more dispersed power structure of the 50’s and 60’s, leaders were freer to act out of gut instinct (should the opt to do so) under the well-honed ideation that, at least where foreign policy was concerned, America could do no wrong.

While American involvement in Indochina began in earnest during the Eisenhower years, it was Neanderthals like LBJ and Richard Nixon who committed the country to all-out warfare – men who acted on instinct rather than reason.

Don’t get me wrong; Nixon and Johnson were brilliant and hard-working individuals [I met Richard Nixon and spoke with him briefly – found him to be pleasant and congenial, if a bit over-animated] but these two men were base in their personal motivations – much like George W. who slaughtered tens of thousands because Sadam had badmouthed his “daddy”.

Never underestimate the power of the Id – the beast within that beckons us to the fray.

As for Orwell’s endless war – that’s what’s going on right now in the ME and Ukraine. The Vietnam War had more visceral and, yes, more mythic origins.

If there is any oil and the Chinese start to entertain ideas about getting some of it, either a US military base would spring up, an Ebola outbreak necessitating the need for several thousand troops, or if all else fails, a “liberation” or “humanitarian” mission. Only problem is the Vietnamese and surrounding regions likely have not forgotten the 2 million Asians we killed (other people don’t count, americans focus on the 50,000 some casualties we lost) (which when exposure to agent orange and suicides are factored in, the number of death directly or indirectly related to that war is much greater). So they might not be so receptive of our ever so benevolent intentions of “spreading democracy” or “liberating” those areas.

See “Vallery of Death” Ted Morgan”s in depth analysis of the Ðien Biên Ph? debacle and the peddling of the “Domino” theory by the French to a gullible Eisenhower in order to try to hold on to their empire. The hairball notion seems to have been enshrined in American policy but one must remember the high panic that the red menace engendered in the US back then. Typically of colonial powers, only 25% of the losses at Ðien Biên Phu were French the majority were Vietnamese that had foolishly joined the French There was also a contingent of Legionnaires made up of
ex-Wehrmacht vets. The book is a fascinating read

Regarding US policy with respect to Syria, Iraq and Islamic state/ISIS/ISIL: astronomically far out of anything that a strategist familiar with Sun Tzu would consider rational- unless this policy is a make work program for US military industrial congressional complex. Maybe our overseers will offer Federal student loan forgiveness to those willing and able to “volunteer” and serve some military ‘service’…
JHK: Thanks for the recent David Collum podcast, much appreciated!

Not so loud. The neocons might get ideas from you. Yes, pay off that student debt to drop bombs and missiles and kill untold thousands of people over oil, at the risk of being shot, the victim of a suicide bomb or road side bomb, contracting the Ebola virus, getting exposed to radiation depleted munitions, or beheaded…..and come back to a country where there are no jobs and your benefits are being cut by the repugs in Congress, the very same draft dodging bastards that always seem so eager to send other people off to fight the resource wars that make people like them so very wealthy

But Jim, look at all the people who marched for action on climate change in New York yesterday! Hope and change! (Yeah, right . . . ) — Steven W. Maginnis

Steven, your cynicism is noted. It must just be a coincidence that the Climate Change March coincided with the Rockefeller announcement of divestment. The Rockefellers are abandoning oil… that is change… a change I can believe in. Yeah, just a coincidence.

“The Rockefeller family, whose legendary fortune was built by John D. Rockefeller through Standard Oil, announced that its $860 million philanthropic foundation is joining the divestment movement and abandoning fossil fuels. The announcement comes just ahead of the United Nations climate-change summit that starts Tuesday in New York City, and is part of a broadening divestment initiative in which people commit to selling shares of energy stocks. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has already eliminated investments involving coal and tar sands, while increasing its investment in alternative energy sources, the fund’s president said.”

Coincidence? Not a chance. Remember that 350.org (principal organizer of the People’s Climate March Parade) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund. Avaaz, fundraising arm of the neoliberal climate activist industrial complex, funded the PR campaign billed as the People’s Climate March. The fossil fuel divestment campaign is a clever tool to funnel private and public investment into the cash cow of “renewable” energy projects, in addition to pumping up stock buybacks for the FF companies. Win-win, all in the name of saving the planet.

I am glad that somebody mentioned the Climate March of 300,000-400,000 people a train ride away from James Kunstler’s lair.
Is it a BAD thing that the Rockefeller’s Foundation is divesting from fossil fuels? I find it hard to argue how, as that means a key part of the Establishment is itself realizing they have to change. Chris Hayes had an interesting story in the Nation and also Sam Seder interview about the financial disaster which awaits the fossil fuel industries including the Koch Bros when the financial elite realizes their $10 Trillion worth based on alleged reserves is a sham. Not only because it is increasingly expensive to get these fossil fuels ($612 in 2012 to $1 Trillion in 2013) but they will not be allowed to get them.

As Chris Hayes points out 350.org’s campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline slowing down possible export of Tar Sands, divestment campaign, opposition to fracking attacks the fossil fuel industry from many directions. And the key is to change investor opinion so they stop investing in fracking, Tar Sands, etc etc.
Which is beginning to happen.

The “No Nukes” campaign was similarly successful in preventing any new nuclear power plants being built in the US for decades by attacks on them from all directions.

I proudly attended the Climate March and believe me there was no glorification of the Rockefellers, Capitalism, financiers or any other major interest group. We were looking for my Peace Group to march with and wound up going through whole phalanxes of Socialists, people against fracking, and some planning to join the “Flood Wall Street” real protests Monday.
There were many attacks on Capitalism as unsustainable, Wall Street, the financiers, the endless Wars etc.
If this was a Wall Street or Rockefeller “conspiracy” it is hard to fathom why they wanted to spread outright attacks on Capitalism and support for Socialism.

There is talk in the finance news sites about a possible “Carbon Bubble” based on the illusory wealth of fossil fuels which may pop if the carbon is blocked from being extracted besides being more expensive to be extracted. Which would just hasten increased prices for the fossil fuels that are already in the pipeline ending the $3.13 gasoline prices enjoyed by the Happy Motoring public at the moment.

What was most heartening about the Climate Rally was the large number of young people, college students from all over who know it is their lives on the line. And also the diversity from various interest groups.

The train I took to the March was packed to the gills with people NOT driving cars to the Rally and everyone I talked to supported running more trains and Green Transit. Another encouraging note which James Kunstler should laud is the Amtrak Peoples Climate Train from California which was an express symbol of the need to promote Rail. It got headlines in every town it stopped to pick up more Rally participants.

Obviously the Peoples Climate March had some big money backers. So what? There are some rich people who live quite well but understand very well that if change does not happen we are all screwed. Stewart Mott was a fascinating example:

JHK said,”The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle.”

What honor? I am getting old, I guess, and don’t have a memory of honorable acts committed by my country anymore. Maybe you could remind me of something that wasn’t primarily self serving that this country has done that could be construed as honorable.

How about Sweden? Muslims are pouring in by the tens of thousands, and it is against the law to say anything negative about it. Saudi Arabia has requested in Scandinavia any criticism of Mohammed be punishable by law.

How far away is the day when howling mobs of fierce bearded Muslims, brandishing swords and kalishnikov rifles, chase the last white Englishman thru the streets of a London on fire, hell bent on cutting off his head, black flag flying over 10 Downing Street, call to prayer emanating from St Pauls Cathedral where the Cross used to be?

Of course, the 1953 event was back in the days when a “flood of the century” really was just that. Nowadays, thanks to climate change, we get the “fotc” every other week, which will soon be moved up to every 3 days, etc.

Beyond that, I got nothing. I think that’s why we have so many movies that invoke Nazis, zombies, vampires, evil supernatural villains of some sort, etc.

If we looked at ourselves any closer, the audience would get very confused as to who these days is really the villain.

Purely on a constructively critical level, I think you could use a little editing. Some of your grammar is a bit archaic and the punctuation is off in a couple places, which makes a few spots a kinda clunky. However the ideas are good and the overall atmosphere is compelling. I particularly like the references to high wet-bulb temps.

Book I just read, ‘Twilight of Abundance’ posits sun is dimming and global cooling is at hand, allowing for a shorter growing season, which will cause worldwide famine within the next decade. Also says global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the global elite and former commies, who are now professional environmentalists. Says interesting things about China, like they despise the west, specially after the 08 meltdown when we went to them tin cup in hand, and are eager to give a a good ass whippin. Vlad, what do you think?

That or the Ebola virus will be the next false flag event in the US as an excuse to impose martial law. What are people guessing on? An ISIS attack of some sort on US soil or an Ebola outbreak as a pretext to impose martial law? They can’t use that first Malaysian jet they hijacked to Diego Garcia, that is likely being dressed up to look like it was damaged by a BUK missile and switched for the one shot down by the neo Nazis over the Ukraine with intense 30mm cannon fire as the modern day Lusitania to get reluctant European and NATO dupes to jump on the demonize Putin/sanction Russia bandwagon. Obummer, killer Kerry, and Hitlery Clinton’s assholes have sure puckered up about this one, as well as that over sized fetus, John bonehead McCain and the usual neocons/talking mouthpieces/whores and sell outs

Also “in the mix”: Although I can no longer find a link (I may be using the wrong search terms), rebels now hold a strip of Syria. If I remember even partially correctly, it’s 3 miles wide and 40 miles long, stretching from Jordan to Lebanon, tucked snugly to the entirety of the NE Israeli border. This disallows the Syrian military from attacking, as the ‘rebels’ happen to be under the protection of batteries of Israeli artillery and air power. Try and find reference to that, if you will. Good luck and good hunting, U-boat commanders…

The game for the Champions of Stupidism (the general american public) is now: Pin the arms and funding on the “properly vetted” proxy army. What could possibly go wrong?

To serve and protect. Military contractors for hire — coming to a town near you. Here’s hoping they’ve been given enough arms and funding to combat evil-doers (formerly known as American citizens). What could possibly go wrong?

Now, as for myself? I’m just hoping that the “financial” leg of the stool is the first to be kicked out. That may allow for some facing of facts before a complete flood of chaos ensues. (Not placing any bets, however.)

—And I really can’t wait to see the internecine War of the Xtian Denominations to find out which stark, raving mad, delusional demagogues get to be the regional warlords. Now that’s entertainment, American Style! (But wait…….when the goodies and handouts run dry, aren’t religionists in this exceptional country better than them nasty ol’ Musselmen?) Who’ll get purged first? Incurious minds want to be told what to do and who to kill!

I dunno about that, but the “Christians” who colonized our land were pretty barbaric assholes…in the name of their God.

In a single massacre in “King Philip’s War” of 1675 and 1676 some “600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a ‘barbeque’.”

Christianity’s better than Islam because….oh yeah, because Christians don’t judge people by saying things like “lay off the pipe”(anyone must be on drugs if they don’t agree with janos). Christianity’s better than Islam because….oh yeah, Jesus never called anyone “stupid” . I see what you mean Janos. Maybe you should try it

Sure we are, using the same brilliant military tactics that allow people to scoot across the WH lawn and nearly penetrate the bastion of liberty. If one doofus with a folding knife can make it that far, why not some with a vest full of C-4?

The truth is that no one in the gov has any idea what to do, other than to keep playin’ war, because those folks are the ultimate “job creators!”

“We’re all set up for a classic state of siege with the Pentagon militarizing every Podunk police department in the land, and one can easily imagine a single IS operation aimed at some soft American target shoving us into hysteria.””

This certainly worries me. The local little town (pop. 2500) recently got themselves a Humvee. Hoo-rah! They painted it black and white like the cop car in the old Andy Griffith show. So a nutty Islamist blows up a grocery store, militarized Barney Fife responds, and you could see things unravel pretty fast. One hopeful note, the fools didn’t know how to use the Humvee. They were out playing (training) in it, and broke the damn thing, so now it needs service (apparently the Feds don’t pay for that!), and it is permanently parked in the police lot. This seems emblematic of a lot of our efforts.

Hmmm… Well, hopefully they will install some sort of swivel platform and push the Humvee over on that so that at least its machine gun – I assume it has one – can be trained on the evildoers even if they are somewhat far away.

Either that or pass a local ordinance declaring that “all evil doers must approach this vehicle from the direction its weapon is pointing, or risk being found in violation of Municipal Ordinance 123.xyz”.

You’d think that people would learn but they don’t. Even the most educated and expensively degreed people on this fucking planet.

Can’t remember who said it but civilizations don’t collapse because they make mistakes but because they keep making the same mistakes over and over. And it’s not just their own mistakes that Americans don’t learn from. They repeat the same mistakes that others make.

To be fair, the USA rendered valuable service to the cause of civilization against some truly monstrous regimes.

But then Americans watched Vietnamese donkey-riders hand the French army its couilles in the 1950s. And later watched the Soviet military retreat from Afghanistan with its ass in a sack. And then, unbelievably, Americans decided that it would be a good idea to have a go with those same donkey-riders in both places. And spent a ton of money and a lot of lives. And got beat both times.

And, in Iraq, at enormous expense, replaced one set of cut-throats with another. But not only that, spent bazillions training and equipping an Iraqi army, only to watch that army take to its heels in the face of a most sorry-assed, untrained, sparsely equipped gang of psychos that should have had their days on this earth ended as grease-stains in the sand at the hands of that same fleeing army.

Well, not one to be deterred by a long list of fuck-ups, the coolly analytical, cerebral and detached Obama, the man that dines and consorts with other cerebral and coolly detached intellectuals, the man all about hope and change, the half-black man who was raised by white people, but whose skin color nonetheless and absurdly enough acted as a salve for the liberal conscience, the man that the American electorate insisted would be the best man for Commander in Chief, not once but twice, looks bound and determined to do more, much more, of what the US does worst.

He insists that he won’t. No boots on the ground. Nosiree. Swears to God. Yes, he learns from experience. No, you see, just a campaign of bombing. From way, way up, well out of harm’s way.

You know, he ain’t no Dubya, he’s educated, he’s a scholar, he’s data and evidence oriented, and, unlike the booze addled frat boy, he says he don’t do no stupid stuff. Who’s he kidding?

My question is, and I’m sure he’s asked himself the same question, and I’ll bet Michelle reminds him weekly, why oh why did he run for a second term?

But think of the money the Weapons manufacturers made. Think of how much weaker the people are, how much more demoralized, the countless men returning maimed and maddened. Think of how the Government has grown and now just as Obama said, we are developing a military force to “protect” us here at home. So you are only right if you believe in their professed purposes. From their real point of view, it’s been a glorious success for the most part. They wanted to stay in Iraq, but the Shiites said to go. So now we’re coming back using ISIS to terrify them into submission.

Remember America is just their donkey, and Americans just cannon fodder. Read Project for a New American Century to divine their real goals over there. Read the Georgia Guide Stones for the long term global goals. Gore just bought sea side property – that’s how terrified he is of global warming. But has not the concept born much political fruit? That’s what matters. Stop clinging to appearances. America ceases to be a Nation as such back in 1913 with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act. And tin foil does stop intrusive waves and will be used in hats in the future. Black helicopters were always real – see the movie Black Hawk down? Anything else?

DIME munitions [dense inert metal explosives], developed by the US Air Force in 2006, have been tested repeatedly on the people of Gaza, who have long served as involuntary lab rats for Israel’s weapons industry.

DIME bombs contain tungsten, a cancer-causing metal that helps to produce incredibly destructive blasts which slice through flesh and bone, often decapitating the lower limbs of people within the blast radius.

Paid for by the American Tax Payer.

As to the upcoming apocalyptic struggle against China….. it’s the same overstated BS told to Americans about the Soviet Union….it’s all hype by the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Why would China seek to “eat our lunch,” as Pentagon officials are fond of saying, or replace the United States as a global power? It has no ideology that calls for bringing its regime’s ideals to the rest of the world.

And it is under enormous pressure to attend to a host of serious domestic concerns, including an aging population, persistent environmental challenges, and an economic slowdown.

And you won’t be seeing any hope or change any time soon. To get those extra favors means eight not four years of cooperation. He won’t be working for Greenpeace of that we can be sure.

I hope he doesn’t start a blog and start warning us about attacks from whatever terrorists of the day there be when he is out of office and thinking his bullshit is going to be loved by the American people for life. Comments like this for example.

“One can easily imagine a single IS operation aimed at some soft American target shoving us into hysteria.”

Because then you will know a couple of more idiots are being helped to stuff their backpacks.

The U.S. should take extraordinary measure to save dollar, comparable only to that of the global cataclysm, said Executive Director of the “Institute for Global Perspectives” at Columbia University, Professor, Ph.D. Paul Christie, an employee of the U.S. national security. In a recent interview with “European Economic Bulletin” (Germany) he explained further American policy in solving their financial problems through the “Ukrainian question”.

The US need to find a chance to repay their 17 trillion debts without a significant decline of their population level for others, no matter how cynical it sounds. “No country in the world could not do this without being turned into a desert. Therefore it is necessary to organize the event to the whole world, every country in varying degrees, have become involved in the resolution of financial distress in America”. It needs new markets, and so the single market matched is Europe. America at any cost needs to reorient the European economy, which cooperates closely with Russia, on the transatlantic.

As Paul Christie puts it: “…It was necessary to create a situation in Europe that the Europeans themselves have refused to energy cooperation with Russia and other energy suppliers and tied to its economic interest in energy supplies from the United States”. Europe must help rebuild the American economy, and Ukraine’s role – to dissolve Europe with Russia. Will it fall apart or single – it has no value to address the underlying problem. “Ukraine only means by which it is possible to solve all problems without dragging the world into another world war. She plays the role of the dam, which will interrupt the European co-operation with Russia. And what there is order, form of government – it is absolutely not interesting questions.”

So, America in Ukraine is solely for their own selfish interests to create a situation in Europe, which would allow the U.S. to overcome the current financial crisis and remain the world economic leader, keeping the dollar as the world currency. This process is now struggling hard Russian connecting links with China. America’s actions are aimed at creating such a ruling regime in Ukraine, where the stable energy supplies from Russia to Europe would have been impossible. The purpose of U.S. actions in Ukraine – shut economic cooperation between Europe and Russia, forcing Europeans to completely shift to the U.S. market.

“……in my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today.”

You give two examples:

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO, and the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL).

Can I suggest there is a third example: The unfailing US support for Israel.

Providing the Israel Zionist regime with $3.1billion per year military aid, and countering every UN Resolution to hold Israel accountable for war crimes, is immoral on all levels, and stokes arab anger.

“this American connection with Israeli interests,” Walid Shaqir wrote in the pan-Arabic daily Al Hayat. “It contributes to the rising hatred against Washington in the region.”

A US Foreign Policy that continues this support of Israel is one which will continue to outrage the world.

History is written by the victors—and the victors are often large, arrogant empires not particularly inclined to look favorably on other cultures. It therefore became commonplace for entire peoples to be thought of as “barbaric.”

We’ve mentioned before how the term itself came from the ancient Greeks, who dismissed foreign languages as sounding like “bar bar bar.” A relentlessly xenophobic society, the Greeks believed that people were either Greek or barbarian. Later, the term came to designate any tribe or nation that did not conform to certain codes and customs. From Rome to China, humanity has long tried to vilify and degrade people who were in some way different.

For a long time, the popular view of the Vikings was as a vile, ruthless group who murdered their way across Europe, reeking of filth and cruelty.

Well, as it turns out, the “filthy” Vikings were actually more concerned about hygiene than most Europeans of their age. For one thing, they bathed regularly—a rarity at the time. They made elaborately decorated combs and other grooming items, and many Vikings bleached their hair blond to conform to certain cultural ideals of beauty. They even designated Saturday, or “Iaugardagur” as a “day for washing.”

Norse settlements in Iceland actually had a law which called for the most severe punishments for offenders who intentionally made someone dirty as a means of disgracing them.

I agree with Pittsburgher. The notion that JHK tables as plausible of Ukrainian fighter jets shooting down MH-17 is ludicrous. Reason 1: The SU-25 often cited in this delusionary scenario is indeed a ground attack aircraft with a service ceiling of 22,000 ft and its arnament consists of air to ground missiles. Reason 2: Even assuming to inform the pundits that they ought to have said the aircraft(s) was the SU-27 ‘Flanker’, the notion does not fly. The SU-27 is armed with 6-R27 medium to long range infrared guided missiles and 4-R73 short range missiles and 1 (count’em one) 30 mm cannon. The rate of fire of the cannon is very slow at about 120 rounds per minute with a total capacity of 150 rounds. This gun is prone to overheating and the rate of fire is continuing to be lowered. To say the random pattern and varying size of holes in MH-17 were done by cannon fire is ludicrous. The gun would have created a geometric pattern of fire with same size holes. Reason 3: If a SU-27 pilot wanted to bring down MH-17, the missile systems would have been engaged. The armament of R-27 missles have a range of 130 kms and could have been deployed from a distance. It is nonsense to suggest the pilot would have moseyed up to within a couple of hundred meters ( the range of the cannon is 200 – 800 m ) of MH-17 and blasted away for a minute hoping his gun wouldn’t jam. It would be like shooting an elephant with a 22. Reason 4: The Dutch authorities stated in a preliminary report that the plane was brought down by ‘high energy objects’. These objects are consistent with the shrapnel producing, compression generating ‘BUK’ ground to air radar guided missile system.
The reason MH-17 was shot down was because of a botched False Flag event courtesy of the Kremlin. The plot unfolded because the clandestine ‘BUK’ operators were told to shoot an airplane at about 32,000 ft at 16:20 at a town called Pervomaiske. Unfortunately, for the Russian soldiers, they went to the wrong Pervomaiske, north east of Donetsk. At 16:20 the ‘BUK’ launcher found an airplane at 32,000 ft and unknown to them, that airplane was the flight delayed ( by 15 minutes ) MH-17. Had they gone to the correct Pervomaiske, to the north west of Donetsk, they would have found an airplane also flying at about 32,000 ft, at precisely 16:20. This particular airplane happened to be an Aeroflot flight bound from Moscow to Larnica, Cyprus. The subsequent reaction of the belligerent Kremlin would have been to unleash the 45,000 Russian military troops on the border, with their tanks and self-propelled artillery, chomping at the bit, having the False Flag needed for total invasion. The link sbu.gov.ua/sbu/control/en/publish/article;jsessionid=73352780A12C97E27DD0BF852482D3C0.app1?art_id=12… will provide more on this as well as a search for Russian False Flag Aeroflot MH-17.

As the political status quo shatters, even planetary geology seems to mirror the social unease, unless it is just the immediate, ubiquitous reporting of such events that makes it appear the earth is becoming more active and dangerous, like those pesky teens rampaging through the white streets of America. Some propose that human-induced climate change (aka global warming) from all those cars and planes and power stations “might” be a factor in increased earthquake and volcanic activity. Perhaps there is even a natural feedback loop from all that atmospheric CO2 aggravating the geo-political disorder. Is ISIL then a reaction of nature as well as an historical event, as if the planet were trying to cleanse itself? Are ISIL the most honest environmentalists since they overtly pursue death and destruction of peoples – truly the only solution? None of that pink leotard and tights stuff for these folks, or green t-shirts with “save the ocean” or some such slogan which you can bet is a prelude to a solicitation to donate. No, these folks come straight from the bowels of earth itself intent on bringing back the 11th century which had no cars or planes or power stations. Speaking of pink leotards, tights, and green t-shirts no less a luminary than RFK, Jr. was making sure to be noticed – like the man who likes to be seen praying – at the get together in New York. Some reporter coloring outside the lines managed to extract the following Cheneyesque outburst, which is why the environmental movement (as the Archdruid noted some time ago) is doomed:

“The multi-millionaire then declared he will not stop using a phone or a car because he does not believe that quality of life should be sacrificed for the environment.”

We can help the Ukraine people pretend to keep warm this winter with our imaginary surplus of shale gas. We will also need some imaginary compressor facilities for the natural gas and imaginary pressurized tanker ships. Something that can be contracted to Disney, as we face our virtual future reality.

By the way, it was interesting to note this weekend that the Toronto Globe and Mail business section had an article titled “Shell out for defence stocks before they explode”. Wow – two puns in one head line. The whole thesis of the article is in this one sentence “In other words, military spending really only has one direction to go: Up.” So, maybe this long dragged out recession will end as most do, with an orgy of tax subsidized destruction.

Anyway, I was so taken aback by your opening sentence this week that I had to look up the definition for the word that means the opposite of hyperbole. The word is “litotes.”

So, saying “There are a few Starbucks in Seattle,” is litotes.
Who knew? Now I’ve got to look up the pronunciation.

Similarly, “In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today,” is also litotes. Just “your lifetime,” JHK? How about the lifetime of every human being and every giant redwood that has ever lived – maybe times 10! It’s a world class disaster. And that’s no hyperbole. either.

So, thanks for the humorously understated opening to another week’s work!

“Among the dozens of sanctions directed against Russia, the most extreme one was proposed by the UK, which pressed European Union leaders to block Russian access to the SWIFT banking transaction system… Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel swiftly rejected the British proposal as too extreme, the damage has been done. It is now abundantly clear to Moscow that the US-UK evil twins are not content with symbolic sanctions but are really out to destroy its economy… ”

In short, in our desperation to continue the petrodollar hegemony, we’ve only pushed away other countries, who are turning to each other rather than deal with our wars, politics, and Wall Street. Russia, China, Iran, India, and Brazil come to mind.

My elementary understanding is they will exchange tangible goods for tangible goods, not tangible goods for paper money that a banker brings into existence at a keyboard, which isn’t even backed by gold.

Our country was founded on getting something for nothing, or at least as little as possible, from the blood, sweat and tears of other people and nations who weren’t designated as being the right class, race, religion or nationality. It worked for 238 years, and even pulled up many groups and nations. Whether one thinks this was right or wrong is almost irrelevant; to move forward: it just doesn’t work anymore.

The Western powers-that-be have three choices: adapt gracefully and with dignity, go down hard like the dinosaurs, or destroy the planet from WWIII in a jealous tantrum that we are no longer being invited to the party and can’t eat all the cake.

Perhaps it’s time for us to stay home, divert our money from wars and into employing the 1/5 of unemployed Americans to rebuild our factories, transportation and infrastructure. Tattoos or not, there is nothing that Americans can’t do when they have real work to do.

Flipping burgers and greeting Walmart customers is not real work unless you’re 16, no matter what race or class you were born into. Use the military to create, not destroy. We could do so much, like rebuilding cities, i.e., masonry, plumbing, electrical, factory work, and for those interested, medical technology, teaching, and green projects, etc. Isn’t this what we’d be doing if we were the only country on earth? Or will we descend deeper into modern day hate-filled tribalism fueled by the Internet?

This is quite true, and in fact I’ve pointed it out at my blog. It’s also quite true that Putin’s ascendance is precisely because of artificially set high oil prices which I also cover at my blog, although interestingly enough the fine folks at the Global Research site don’t cover that angle too well since they’re so heavily invested in the Peak Oil meme.

You imply it’s pure incompetence and/or hubris involved — that somehow these masterminds are so blind and so stupid they don’t realize the incentives they’ve provided — that they don’t see the behavior they’re enabling and engendering?

I think they clearly realize it, and the sooner we all do the better able we’ll be to answer the why once we get past that what and how.

I don’t think America’s going back to Iraq, or going into Syria. At least not like it did under Dubya. There isn’t going to be another full scale invasion and occupation by Western forces in the Middle East. The groundwork is being laid for them to destroy each other — and they will, unless India and Pakistan beat them to it.

““In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today.” –JHK

Overstatement much. Hyperbole much.

People are concerned about ISIL, an impromptu army of 20,000-31,000 [as of Sept. 18, 2014], depending on who you read. Let’s go with the upper end and say 30,000 men, who have no air force and have no navy.

Arrayed against ISIL is a coalition Obama organized of 50 nations with navies and air forces, plus the European Union, plus NATO, and including all the Arab nations in the vicinity of ISIL. This coalition is pledged to use their resources to wage a war of attrition over a long time period to degrade and destroy ISIL.

Now, I ask you, JHK, you of hyperbole and overstatement: realistically, who do you think it going to win this war?

The answer is not difficult: ISIL is going to be degraded and destroyed, just as Obama said. The ISIL soldiers are not supermen. They are only 30,000 strong. Come back to reality, please.

The chief objective of this international effort will be to shut down ISIS media operations completely, thereby preventing any further embarrassing videos of “junior varsity” jihadis sporting scimitars and cockney accents lopping the noodles off of US journalists.

Lewis Black is proof positive America is not a Fascist nation. The man, as humorous as he is, obviously is mentally ill and highly medicated. In a Fascist state, he’d either be a uniformed Government official, or he would be institutionalized, voluntarily or involuntarily, as was once the case in America.

Remember the days, not too long ago, when they institutionalized you for showing any emotion or otherwise odd behavior? Zany satire in those days of yore was an indictment. Those who couldn’t help themselves, meaning they couldn’t hold back from humorously and animatedly, yet intelligently, criticizing the whole damn mess called life, were quickly tucked away in mental wards until, and if, they got themselves “right.” If you were of means, you could come and go willingly in this process. If you weren’t of means, well, you weren’t so fortunate.

Today, those without means who engage in the aforementioned galling behavior are generally homeless or well on their way. The Street is their asylum, and for all those who are borderline, with or without means, blogging and the internet have taken the place of the former mental institutions where bits and bytes are doled out daily like candy to appease a society in search of sanity.

If you’re of means these days, or you would like to be of means, you can take your intelligent, zany, satirical schtick on the road like Lewis Black where the Comedy Club has taken the place of the infamous McClean.

So don’t hand me this nonsense that America is Fascist. America has never been freer. Take a look around. Unhindered mental illness, free of incarceration, is all around us. “Look Mom, no institutions” is the mantra of today. America truly is “the land of the free” — we’re now free to be insane without penalty, but rather, if you’re clever enough, with monetary reward and celebrity.

By the time McLean Hospital opened its doors in the mid-19th century, mental illness had been treated by such methods as lowering the patient into a dungeon filled with snakes, pelting him with vigorous spouts of cold water, inducing vomiting, draining great quantities of blood, spinning him on a rotating board, dosing him with opium and hashish, and soaking him in a warm, electrified bath. Founded at the dawn of the Freudian age, McLean offered something revolutionary: fresh-baked rolls and art lessons, therapy by landscaping. Alex Beam gives us a fascinating tour of the next century in what one doctor bemoaned as the “medical playground” of psychiatry. On the manicured campus in Belmont, doctors adopted and then rejected lobotomy, adopted and rejected Freudian analysis, and were finally drawn with all their profession in the direction of psychopharmacology. Anne Sexton taught poetry
there before her own suicide, and Sylvia Plath and Susanna Kaysen emerged with syllabus-ready memoirs, and one patient of Freud’s greeted doctors every morning by saying “I am my father’s penis.”

Beam is a skeptical inquirer, and his book may ruffle the feathers of local psychiatrists. (Has ruffled.) But for ordinary readers, he does
what few writers have done — tell with humor and intelligence the story of doctors and patients groping through their suffering and toward some kind of answer.

Cold, there’s no doubt that you’re on to something important, here.
Certainly, the way in which American society incentivizes, discourages, exaggerates, or minimizes mental “disorders” – has an impact.

Think about a mental tendency toward caution, for example. For 10’s of thousands of years cautious people were a valuable asset to human groupings. “That Og is jumpy sometimes,” said the tribal councilmen, “But it’s good to have him around to spot those saber toothed tigers.”

And as the US reaches the end of our empirical l overreach, a few cautious persons in positions of leadership would be a useful thing.
Even a bipolar leader might be OK – if he/she were able to descend out of mania occasionally.

But it is not to be. No one rises far into leadership who does not have a permanent, positive, :”can do” attitude. Thus, the cautious never make the 1st cut, unless they have their caution permanently medicated away with the many compounds in the US pharmacopia.

“No one rises far into leadership who does not have a permanent, positive, :”can do” attitude. ”

Good post and yes indeed. The ‘weak on foreign policy’ gun is pointed at the head of every politician in this country. Thus a genuine moment of national withdraw and reflection becomes impossible: always our problem is ‘out there’ and never here. Always out and never in amounts to attenuating an ever weakened thread. It’s illogical and in fact, a far greater threat than the next terrorist bogeyman.

It’s a mighty profitable business for the few however. If one could statistically analyze how many ‘terrorists’ are killed by a Tomahawk missile as opposed to how many rise up in retributive fury in the aftermath I would guess the latter carries the day. And again, good business for the few. Kill a few terrorists with missiles but produce far more as a result…more terrorists and more missiles to build: Ka Ching!

Yes, Fascism is for Law and Order. Our System uses Law and Order only strategically. At other times, they are fine with riots, intimidation, and bloodshed. Depends who is doing it too who. Thus Sam Francis called it Anarcho-Tyranny. Mr Francis was fired from his job for attending an American Renaissance conference and died in poverty. What kind of America is that?

Phew! It looks like this Ebola situation might be spinning out of control.

What good are 3000 US troops going to do when 1 million cases are expected by January, and the disease is spreading exponentially? Also, expect these troops to be attacked by various terrorists groups, criminals, and cannibals. A close reading of Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ might be in order here!

A lot of bullshit emanating from the climate change festivities in NYC. Among various flags I saw flying sunday was the hammer & sickle and the Black Flag if Gaza. Yesterday on NPR I heard RFK, jr. state fossil fuels have to be eliminated completely and replaced with ‘renewables’. Do you think he really believes this? Leonardo DiCapprio, the titular head of the current movement, was silent when queried about his 3 mansions, 5 yachts, and private 747 he flies around the world on. I heard many complaints about ‘capitalism’. What I want to know, what about the environmental record of communism, of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe in the 20th century, and of China right now. And get this: China and India, 2/5 of earth’s population, aren’t even showing up at this vaunted climate change conference this week at the UN. ha!

Call me crazy, but I got the feeling, if RFK, jr.’s wish came true, and indeed fossil fuels were eliminated or banned, and you ended up freezing to death inside your houses in, Wisconsin, Ohio and Montana (“Who the hell are you? We’re saving the planet here?”) for lack of home heating oil, there would still be enough to keep the Kennedy mansion in Hyannis, Mass. well lit and toasty warm over the Christmas holidays, with a measure ‘fossil fuel’ left over to power up DiCaprio’s private 747 airliner for a weekend getaway jaunt to Fiji in the South Pacific. Sustainability seems to be for the ‘little people’, not them.

How about this irony: A parade with an anti capitalist and anti wall street theme being led by a guy with $600 million in the bank. We got some good belly laughs over that one. I’ve seen Al Gore speak twice and both times he arrived in a fleet of SUVs. I wonder where these luminaries are staying during their jaunt into NYC? I’ll be its not at the econo-inn. No, probably at some pretty nice place, most likely the best hotels in the city. The global warming scam pays pretty well. Oh ya, don’t forget the world leaders flying in this week on their own energy sucking jet aircraft, half of them criminals and dictators, with one or two cannibals thrown into the mix to make interesting.

Yes, we have no leaders anymore, only “pushers” A mother brought her little boy to see Gandhi. She said, he eats too much sugar. Please tell him to stop. He’ll listen to you. Gandhi said come back tomorrow. They came back and he told the boy to stop eating sugar. The Mother asked, why did you tell us to come back? Gandhi answered, Because I was still eating sugar yesterday.

CFN, you criticize the main stream press, yet show daily how easily you are manipulated by it. Y2K, ISIL, H1N1, bird flu, ebola… your current hysteria is dictated by main stream media. Case in point:

“Phew! It looks like this Ebola situation might be spinning out of control.” — BRH

One thing is certain: a deadly disease is coming that will swamp our hospitals, lay millions low and by this time next year between 250,000 and 500,000 worldwide will be dead, thousands of them in the US and Britain.

Despite the best efforts of the medical profession, there’s no reliable cure, and no available vaccine offers effective protection for longer than a few months at a time.

If you’ve been paying attention to recent, terrifying headlines, you may assume the illness is the Ebola virus. Instead, the above description refers to seasonal flu – not swine or bird flu, but regular garden variety influenza.

Our fears about illness often bear little relation to our chances of falling victim to it, a phenomenon not helped by media coverage, which tends towards the novel and lurid rather than the particularly dangerous.

Well said. Welfare is the future for many of us. There aren’t enough jobs due to robots, immigrants, and out sourcing. It’s not a future to be happy about, but it is the probable one unless and until the bottom drops out. A World Made by Hand will be better – especially since the Elite don’t want to share their profits and we wont be able to afford the break throughs.

There will be no more World Fairs. The future is here, it’s high tech, and it’s not going to be shared. The problem for the Elite is how to get rid of most of us and stay in power as they “power down”.

When Obama wants to do something for the middle class worker, like extend unemployment benefits, the Republicans jump up and down screaming we are broke! How are you going to pay for it, they ask. We need an offset somewhere else in the budget; let’s take medical care away from children. Damn people and their damn entitlement mindset.

But when Obama wants to go to war, the Republicans are silent. They leave Washington and go on a seven week vacation. They do not scream we are broke! They do not ask how we will pay for the war. The don’t ask for budget offsets from entitlement programs. They want war. War is good business. Their defense stocks will go up.

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Karl Rove of course, but disabuse yourself of the notion that he was speaking in normal partisan terms.

Ukraine, Iraq or anywhere don’t make sense until you recognize the strategic goal is chaos. The empire rises if everyone else falls. When Victoria Nuland said ‘fuck the EU she was making clear policy statement. All that matters is the giant multi national corporations who work totally within the dollar system.

You’re another American with a weak memory. Or perhaps you really believe we need a real military leader again. Somebody who will stand behind a “Mission Accomplished” banner on a battleship in the early days of the war and long before the last casualty had been inflicted.

Let’s see, for starters, you made two incorrect ad-hominem presumptions in your first sentence. The remainder of your argument (for the sake of brevity and simplicity we shall assume you have one) is predicated on a logical fallacy of an assumed if-then, namely if I don’t approve of the Democrat’s approach to national security than I MUST approve of the Republican approach. You then end with “stupidism indeed”. Foremost, “stupidism” is not a word, and your use of “indeed” to emphasize a point or suggestion that was never made is… a non sequitur, but you digress… troll on…

Not only was he a great horror writer, but a superb all around man of letters and political theorist. To the extent I know his positions, I agree with them 100%. I didn’t take them from him, but came upon them from my own reflections and from the far Right in general. He himself was influenced by Spengler.

See my response to myself. It’s right above your post oh Blind One. I will always be above you – leading you on to new vistas.

Lovecraft was for closed borders, tariffs, a nation that has a market not one that is a market, our White Heritage, and so forth. His views obviously have nothing to do with what is erroneously called conservatism today. But his views are very close to Fascism without the hero worship or excessive militarism. But a healthy respect for heroes and the military is there also. Amazingly balanced from our perspective, but far more common back then. But evil triumphed in the end as we have seen. Lovecraft said, “I am Providence.” If we had had faith in Providence and in Him, this fate could have been avoided. But we didn’t and we let Him die in poverty just as we nailed Christ to the cross.

Jaego
Posted September 22, 2014 at 11:03 pm | Permalink
I saw two guys with hairy backs today with a bunch of kids. One of the kids was older and weirder. Once he spoke, I realized it was female. I think it was the wife of one of the guys. Lovecraft’s vision is not mere metaphor (though that too), but reality. Once pure types are lost, the flesh begins to decay and revert back to something else. But what? Do we really want to know? Some things are best left unknown. Innsmouth is spreading to all of America now. If one can marry a Sophie, where do we draw the line? What’s next? Lascars? Cape Brava Portuguese?

Individual evolution is accomplished within the Race. As Lin Yutang and William Simpson said, a bit of out breeding between close ethnes can be advantageous every now and then. Lin Yutang felt that the Mongols had enriched the Chinese. But mixture between the major races just unravels the whole work of evolution

Or, the better question is, would he ever marry out of a Jewish family? Or is it like the Hotel California — “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave?”

A fascinating topic for me lately, because it’s so little discussed and researched due to its verboten nature, is the plight of German victims post WWII. I’m talking about “innocent” men, women and children who suffered at both the hands of American and Russian soldiers, but mostly Russian. I watched a movie last night, based on a true story, that captured the essence of the complexity involved.

It’s in desperate situations like conquered Germany where the meaning, or meaningless, of life can be found. Abstractions are quickly eviscerated and you’re forced to confront the visceral and primal. Some people are so abstracted, it’s impossible for them to function or cope, others have kept that potential locked away for just such a rainy day, but no one knows until such a fateful time presents itself. It’s not something to beckon. Perhaps it’s better not knowing. In this sense, ignorance is bliss.

Rape is the particular plight of women during war and acknowledged at long last as a war crime.The plight of German women at the end of WW II was especially awful as they had protection from no one. General Eisenhower who punished rape committed by his men with execution outside of Germany (first rape took place six hours after invasion of Normandy had begun)but as for German women all men had free hands as these women were all declared “willing”. The Americans are the only ones to have gone through archives as for army rape in WW II however the one recent book existing is not allowed for publishing in the US because of the war in Iraq (!!)so exists in French version only. The French and the British have preferred to turn a blind eye to what was done by their soldiers towards German women let alone the Russians. It is very important that this film has been made at long last. Subject concerns all not just its victims let alone the children born out of the horrors. Bravo Germany.

Read Hellstorm, the story of the inhuman crushing of the German people after WW2. Russian Commissar Ilya Ehrenburg (Jew) ordered Russian soldiers to rape German women. You do know about the dominance of the Jews in so called Russian Communism, right? Stalin purged some but they remained strong, though not the overwhelming force they had been at the start.

Patton and others were sickened by it – especially the systematic starving of the population. The Morgenthau Plan (Henry Morgenthau, Jew) called for making Germany into an “Agricultural State” – meaning very little aid and allowing tens of millions to die. Roosevelt allowed Morgenthau to float the idea out, but a German American Congressman went after him on the floor of the House. Roosevelt backed off saying, Henry we have to give them something. Morgenthau was bitter, feeling that he had been betrayed. He wanted his genocide! Another good plan was the Kaufman Plan (do I have to say it?) to sterilize all male Germans. He said happily they wouldn’t even have to miss a day of work! This plan had been promulgated during the War and strengthened the Nazi will to fight on.

Now you do know about the major Jewish role in opening our borders, right? Read Peter Brimelow’s “Alien Nation”. Like so so many he was dismissively contemptuous of White Nationalism. To his chastened amazement, he admits that his research revealed that we were right about this. He didn’t become one of us btw. He’s part of the high IQ cult that reveres East Asians. Immigrants like this are fine in his book.

The way we treated our foreign foe was not Christian nor in line with the best in our secular civilization. An unseen alien influence was at work, one that obviously hated not only the Germans but all of White Western Civilization as subsequent events have shown

I was listening to more of what RFK, jr. had to say at the Climate Change parade in NYC. My impression is that he’s a little bit crazy.

Yeah, crazy like a fox. A little research reveals he has this private Gulf Stream aircraft he flies around the country on, making public appearances to sympathetic audiences (mostly college students), encouraging them to eschew fossil fuels and embrace a more minimalist lifestyle. Then he take a chauffered limo back to the gulf stream at the airport and flies to the next appearance.

And i’m still worried how he’s going to keep that Kennedy Hyannisport Mansion warm and well lit on ‘renewables’ during the cold winter months on Cape Cod?

DiCaprio’s 747 is problematic, too. It was big news when he celebrated New Year’s Eve in Australia, then jetted to Las Vegas to celebrate New Years Eve again! Twice in the same day! That crazy Leonardo! You never know where he’s going to turn up! Of course the 747 is doubly important now that he has to go around the world collecting UN Humanitarian awards for his efforts to fight global warming!

The first thing that has to happen for a successful application of martial law inside the US – is that the government that has been unable to control a clearly defined national border and illegal visa overstays, for 30 years – has to become INSTANTLY capable of maintaining military-style checkpoints on a block-by-block basis throughout the United States.

Not happening. Especially not happening with only the US military providing personnel. If you could involve every state and local policeman/woman; then odd of success increase. But how do you do that?

I have no doubt that there’s a plan of paper to make all of this happen. I foresee insoluble problems developing almost immediately – should this plan be executed.

Unable? You really still believe that? They can read license plates from space. They could close the border and deport the criminals anytime they wanted. They let the invasion happen. It’s policy, the goal being the transformation of the United States.

You’re still clinging to conventional understanding here. Read your own post below and apply that principle to this issue. Yes, the Truth is amazing – too amazing for people to believe. Thus normalcy bias is one of their greatest weapons.

In other news, is some force deliberately making Miss America a parody of itself? This years winner won the talent competition by singing a song while playing on her musical instrument of choice. Her choice was the plastic cup.

In still other news, Pres. Obama, leader of the free world, Commander and Chief of the US military for six years, now – is STILL so weak on military protocol that he doesn’t know to move the coffee cup from his right hand into his left hand before returning a right had salute. Oops?

Or is it an oops? Is the pres. deliberately making a mocking statement of his view of the US military. Is that another deliberate satire.

News from Ferguson looks like satire too, upon examination.
Change the headline slightly:

“Civil Rights Activists, Outraged by the Burning of Local Teddy Bears, Respond by Stealing Wigs from Local Business”

Wait until the Grand Jury determines that the police officer was fighting for his life and the shooting was justified; that wig shop will probably be burned to the ground, along with the rest of Ferguson. The upshot of all this african street theatre is that instead of 66% black Ferguson will be 100% black … whitey will take a loss on his property & clear out. Its a big country and we still have the freedom to clear out if we so desire.

Maybe the arms-makers made some money. So what? What burden of debt was put on the US federal govt? A trillion? Two trillion? Three? Does anyone know? Are there even any numbers on this that aren’t a pile of shit?

I mean, the US government is even debasing the money the arms-makers are trying to get. Maybe the arms-makers failed to notice. Would not surprise me. Look at the price of crude. Fifteen years ago it was ten bucks a barrel. Now it bounces between ninety and a hundred-ten.

Think of how much weaker the people are, how much more demoralized, the countless men returning maimed and maddened – Janos

Maddened yes. And, I would add, armed. And highly experienced in the use of arms. Did the Oligarchs fail to notice? Or maybe they DID notice. Is that what’s behind the militarization of American cops? And the surveillance state?

And so where does all this lead? I would argue that the oligarchs that think they’re SOOOOO smart, and all powerful, that are behind all this, and the assholes that speak up for them (like on this site), are cutting their own throats.

I heard a rich American say that he’s moving to Kazakhstan. Why? Because tax rates are lower there. I laughed. I thought sure dick-head, move to Kazakhstan. In the first place who the fuck needs you, in the second place if you’re that dumb as to move there, the average IQ in the USA would surely improve. I mean, the local Kazakh gangsters will be flensing money off that fool like blubber off a whale.

It’s been pretty clear for a long time that the Oligarchs have no real idea what they need to survive. And, these essential things that they need to survive, the Oligarchs work day and night to undermine.

Maybe it would be a good thing if that rich guy were to start a trend. Move the Oligarch class, their families, their enablers and hangers-on, all to Kazakhstan. The people left behind, in my estimation, would be far better off.

But, in the meantime, here we go with ISIS. Again. The US digs its own grave.

Yes, the Government prints money. The people who get it first benefit the most since they can use it before then new money devalues due to the inflation. But you are right in a general sense. All the numbers are just nonsense now. These debts will never be paid. And the War Industry is just another branch of the Government, the “private” branch. (in truth, the Private sector controls the Public but don’t tell anyone)

Which is sunnier, the north or south side of the street? The North side because the houses of the South side create shade. Likewise, the new money causes inflation to those who are “in the shade” of the Houses of Finance and Power.

“But, in the meantime, here we go with ISIS. Again. The US digs its own grave.” –Volodya

The US is part of a 50 nation coalition. They are committed to a long term (think years and decades) war of attrition. It is not just the US. For example, France has done bombing, the Kingdom of Bahrain has used their fighter jets, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has used its air force, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia used its air force, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are actively in the fight.

All of them undertook military action against ISIL terrorists in Syria, using a mix of fighter, bomber, remotely piloted aircraft. They have already taken out key leaders of ISIL, destroyed ammunition depots, and are attacking ISIL command and control centers throughout Iraq and Syria.

ISIL does not have an air force or naval forces. How long do you think 30,000 ISIL soldiers without an air force, without a navy, are going to last? ISIL is up against Obama’s coalition which does have air forces and navies, a coalition that is degrading ISIL daily; a coalition that is committed to fight for as long as it takes until ISIL is destroyed.

O’Bomber is the greatest maximum leader ever……greater than Alexander, Bismarck, and all the Caesars put together….greater even than Jesus and the seven apostles all put together……O’Bomber is a living god……

Obama’s first gaffe toward the military was uttering the words “Marine Corpse”. An unforgettable moment despite the best efforts of the sycophant press to ignore it.

Perhaps it was just plain old ignorance from our Columbia (so it is reported) and Harvard-educated leader. Or perhaps not: an intentional malapropism intended to insult. And similar to the photographs of Dear Leader flipping off more than a few folks while weakly attempting to conceal.

On second thought intentionality would suggest some intelligence informing the action. Maybe just chalk it up to juvenile stupidity, in keeping with the other theme of this week’s offering from our host.

Without going into any detail, I’ve been periphically involved in a dispute at my condo complex between the Board of Trustees on one side and the homeowners on the other. I believe I have clear insight on how to resolve this dispute. I spoke personally to the Chairperson of the Board to explain what’s really going on with the dispute.

He just didn’t get it. I was very clear with him, but it was going in one ear and out the other. That got me thinking about how our country’s leaders are acting wrt all the US’s issues. The government just doesn’t get it. It’s a facile explanation that there’s a conspiracy to bring down America.

By my own observations dealing with people, many persons seem to have some kind of disconnect with reality, a form of mental blindness. It’s an inability to see what’s really happening around them, not insanity per se.

I think this is what’s occurring with our government’s leaders. They don’t see the unavoidable consequences of their actions. They truly don’t imagine that they are taking everyone along a path of destruction. I’m pretty sure this.has been explained to them many times, but like my Board Chairperson, it doesn’t compute. Yes, they may well know they are greedy, corrupt and power-hungry, but they don’t perceive that has an effect in the outside world.

This behavior is called psychopathic, and it is either the result of a neurological wiring problem or the corrosive effect of power or both.

This is why voting, recall and demonstrations will not be effective; only a restructuring of our government by whatever means necessary will take us off this trip to oblivion.

Contemplating the various forms of governance……Plato had democracy near the bottom. In its modern US form…..no decent human can be elected to public office. The masses of asses insist on criminals, liars, perverts, frauds….

BB- “By whatever means necessary…” Those words could earn you a knock at the door at 4AM.

Steve Pieczynic has opined on Alex Jones a while back that the “revolution” is taking place right now at the state level, among governors and such. I don’t see much evidence of that outside my window but it is a romantic concept, and the machinery is at least in place if dormant.

But the more psychotic agents of the Deep State would likely not stand idly by while the middle class reawakens. Jim Garrow related in a recent interview how these thugs without conscience behave: they control you by threatening to kill your wife and deliver her heart to you.

Disclaimer: Both sources above may well be disinformation agents. The Ton of Salt Rule applies.

This is the except
“Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order. Here are the facts. After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt President fled. Against the will of the government in Kiev, Crimea was annexed. Russia poured arms into Eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands. When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days. When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border.”

Foreign Minister Lavrov commented: “As for the U.S. President’s speech, we earned the second place among the threats to international peace and stability: number one is the Ebola virus, number two is the so-called Russian aggression in Europe and ISIL and other terrorists who are now taking hold of the Middle East and primarily of the countries, which have evidenced U.S. interventions, are ranked as number three.”

One wonders how Obama can reproach the Russians for invading a sovereign nation yet accept the apartheid oppression by Israel and the brutal destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure let alone the slaughter of innocent civilians. Admirably a group of Israeli technicians have revealed the extent of Israels inhumanity in the occupied West Bank.

“BB- “By whatever means necessary…” Those words could earn you a knock at the door at 4AM.” – fp to bb –

Yeah, fp. That same thought flitted through my head for a second.
Except government agencies have enshrined “no-knock” procedures very deeply into their training protocols – so deeply that no one seems to give no-knock a second thought anymore. So don’t expect a knock.

And they probably don’t want to talk all that much right away – instead they will plant evidence of drug dealing or child pornography before arresting their “suspect” for a lengthy “conversation” elsewhere.

=======================

Anyway, bill, you and I have talked before about the importance of voting. We’ve generally agreed to disagree, but I’ll restate my position. Voting is all we’ve got, as members of the general public, to impact public policy. And those PTB will be unmoved as voting falls from its present +/-30% of the electorate – all the way down to less that 5%. While voting furthers the illusion – to stop voting is to give up all hope of controlling it. Another perfect Catch 22, it appears.

And their are local races down the ticket that will be far more important in a declining future. Local sheriff, for example, will be somebody you will want to try to have on your side – even (maybe especially) if he just lives on the other side of the creek.

CFN seems quiet. Peiku sensei (sp?) made a great post over at the ArchDruid – concerning how the 4 major US political parties are locked into an unchanging embrace that hastens collapse. I’d like to compliment him – but I won’t even try to get a post thru over there.
I think P.S. posts over here as Neon Vincent, but I may be mistaken.

Plenty of posters make reference to Kunstler over at ADR, but Ozone requests that I not do the reverse. Still pondering that outburst.

And still wondering why “ethnic solidarity” is universally praised whenever poor people do it throughout the land – except when the poor people are poor whites, whose attempts at ethnic solidarity are always and immediately labeled “racist.”

The hatred against Whites is very widespread now and goes to the highest levels. Yet still Ozone, Kiwi, and their ilk feel like “revolutionaries” when they echo this establishment meme. Extraordinary is it not? And it bodes very ill indeed for the future of America and its White Citizens.

I will agree with you to the extent that local government voting may be relevant because of more one-on-one contact between campaigner and voter.

But national elections are a joke, IMO. I believe in liberty, but it’s been my experience that the average voter apparently is not capable of seeing the consequences of electing professional politicians. The entire voting process ought to be restructured beginning with term limits and more strict voter qualifications.

I heard a rich American say that he’s moving to Kazakhstan. Why? Because tax rates are lower there. I laughed.

Puerto Rico is the only “foreign” location I know of that de facto offers US citizens the possibility of reducing their income tax to 4%, and passive income tax to potentially 0%. See Act 20 and Act 22.

Regarding Beantown Bill’s “by any means necessary’ comment. When aging white males start making such comments one can be sure they expect the ‘younger one’s’ to do the heavy lifting.

But how will Beantown, or BHR or Stelmo ‘I deserve my retirement’ Fire , etc, etc, etc, convince the heavy lifters of youth that they, the old and increasingly infirm, still deserve the final days of their social contract but the young guys are shit out of luck?

Fortunately some things never change and the human race is able to detect bullshit hypocrisy when the see or read it.

So you stand with the Illegals then? Sending all 30 million or so of them home with their anchor babies in tow would give our economy a real shot in the arm! It wouldn’t bring back the good ol’ days but it would sure help a lot of Americans stay off the streets.

The illegal immigration debate is over; your side lost and at this point any other talk amounts to what should have been: what could have been.

You believe deporting 30 million people is reality? But just for fun let’s entertain your fantasy. What do you think would happen politically when the remaining ‘legal’ collective Latino population rises up in fury and hits the voting booth ?

The thought of it sends shudders through strategic right-wing thinkers as opposed to the emotive, fantasy types. IOW, it’s game over and it was game over during the Bush years when the GOP opened the border doors far wider than they are at present.

But dream on; the esteemed H.P. Lovecraft –good article by the way–would approve no doubt. (Why did I think of “Tiny Tim” when I typed that?)

My side? In other words, you are for what is happening? Frankly Buck, I’m surprised. I didn’t think you were that far gone. My wild shot hit home.

Worrying about what Hispanics will do has been the ruin of the Republican Party. And no, I didn’t like them before that either. But it’s truly suicidal to spit on their own White base as they have been doing – and for what? The Democrats get the Hispanic vote. You can’t out pander the Democrats without becoming the same as them.

And as BRH asks, whither now? How many immigrants will satisfy you? All of Black Africa will gladly come here – as well as the slums of South America. Why should Mexico and Central America get all the goodies? We’re slated for 400 million by 2050, is that enough for you? Or do you want to go for a billion like India and China?

Are you equating HPL and Tiny Tim? Why? He was a much better writer than Tim was a musician. Or do you just think of Tiny Tim a lot in general? Oh, that they were both ineffective in terms of power? What artist isn’t? They can only try to influence the Men of Power with a vision of Truth and Beauty.

Yeah, I’m still working too. Although not all that much anymore, most days. My “social contract” is with my family. If they have trouble, I’ll help them. Hell, if they don’t have trouble, I’ll help them. If their mom or I have trouble, I’ll expect them to return the favor. If the system stays together then I’ll cash the SSI and private retirement checks I’m supposed to be due.

I notice imports of foreign oil are down to about 8,500, 000 bpd, which means domestic production must be up near the 1970 peak year of about 11 million bpd. I don’t know what it means, but prices are down near $90 per barrel.

I’m waiting for the anti war mobs to get revved up, ‘specially after the bombing runs inside Syria. It was the bombing of Cambodia in 1970 in an attempt to close the Ho Chi Minh trail that really got the campus leftists exercised at the time. I suspect if a Republican is elected president in 2016 the war protesters will be out in the streets droves.

50 years since Mario Savio and the free speech movement at Berkeley, and some kind of ceremony is planned. If you go, be careful what you say. Many, many words, phrases and thoughts are now, a half century later, forbidden and punishable at Berkeley and other campuses thru out the country. Best not to say anything. Much safer that way.

Holder resigns. Thank God. He’s an extraordinary hater of Whites and none of us would be safe with him in position during the Long Emergency.

Here’s a perfect example of Anarcho-Tyranny. Two Canadian bicyclists wander over the northern border, are arrested, and fined 5000 dollars. Meanwhile countless Central Americans and Mexicans come over by design and are set up for life.

Kiwi, you limey gone sour, you are sad that Whites conquered America. We wouldn’t even be here having this discussion (or any other) if we hadn’t. You are cutting at the very root of your existence again with this kind of crazed idealism.

The Indian way of life took up a lot of land. It was incompatible with the White way of life. One side had to win and one lose. The good guys won, Kiwi. If you don’t think so, go back to Europe. Throwing other Whites under the bus in an attempt at vicarious atonement is ignoble – and it doesn’t satisfy the Indians or Maori anyway. You are a blight upon the world, anathema to men of both sides.

That’s what I’m doing Kiwi – keeping the world big. Pygmies like you try to make it small to fit yourselves. Liberalism is Munchkin Land, Bo Bo’s in paradise, believing themselves to be “the City on the Hill” even as Barbarians are in the streets and the Morlocks crawling out of the sewers.

ignoble you say Janos? have you considered the boatloads of Africans brought here and sold like cattle or how the plains are littered with broken treaties that whites never intended to honor? but wait, the original inhabitants of this country, the Africans brought here in chains, they don’t register as people to a xenophobe on steroids like you. yes folks you heard it here first, Janos said it so by god it must be true, white people are now an endangered species. run for your lives! Can’t turn to the endangered species act because I’m sure you want to abolish it. What will you do? Maybe open your eyes. The richest americans are white. ok oprah’s an exception. take a look at a snapshot of all three branches of our government-mostly white. your ‘white makes right’ ranting’s would be more at home at a kkk meeting. every empire in history has ended in ruins, what makes us any different? it’s not because of welfare it’s not because of immigrants it’s because our monotheism is money. you best learn to get along with your neighbor no matter what color their skin because you don’t know who you might need come crunch time. you think when the chips are down all these white folks are gonna come to your rescue? child please

Exactly. The Indians didn’t or couldn’t unite against us when we showed up. So we conquered them and took this fine land for our own. That any White should regret this is bizarre. It’s like spitting on your own portrait or photograph. Now Whites are the disunited ones, unable to coordinate with each other, the ones being conquered by alien groups. That any White should be happy about this is both bizarre and sick. As Jefferson said, survival is the first morality. All other moral question presuppose that you are alive to consider them. You have to temper your rabid idealism – otherwise it doesn’t serve life but only death.

Why wouldn’t Whites be the richest since this is or at least was their country? Do you think the Chinese are the richest in China? C’mon try a bit harder. (Actually Jews dominate many industries now. They look White but don’t act White or consider themselves as such in general)

No non-White is going to help me or any other White when the things get bad. You are very deep in la la land to think something like that. Whites are by far the most charitable people on earth. To believe otherwise is slander. Talk to someone who works in restaurants about how demanding Blacks are and how little they tip.

Remember, the Black Africans were eager participants in the slave trade, along with Jews, Muslims, and yes even Whites. Why do we only hear about the last group?

‘we…took this fine land for our own’. what we should have taken along with the land was the deep respect they had for it. we’ve paved and polluted it until it’s become one eyesore after another. I always regret when humans are brutal to one another and the whites were extremely brutal to the inhabitants they found here. But then to feel that way you have to be able to accept people who don’t look like you as fully human and deserving of respect and dignity. You don’t seem to possess that gene. ‘Now whites are …the ones being conquered by alien groups’. what do you mean by conquered and what whites are now subjugated to these ‘aliens’? You reference Jefferson. I don’t subscribe to his moral standards. he penned that ‘all men are created equal’, but owned slaves. first rule of injustice: see those you wish to exploit or eradicate as nonhuman. ”they look white but don’t act white” referring to Jews. what exactly does it mean to act white? and I don’t think whites are any more charitable than any one else. I guess you’ll have to sue me for slander. what do you base that on anyway, other than extreme bias aka xenophobia. oh yeah your bogus claim that restaurant folks complain about black patrons’ poor tipping…rrright. and white folks are always generous tippers. talk about lala land. and finally you ask why we only hear about whites when it comes to slavery. because without the whites there is no market, there is no demand. the muslims didn’t own the plantations.

The Indians wiped out many large species that once lived here – including the Cro-Magnon Whites and Altai-Siberians who were here before them.

You refused to admit that several groups were involved in African Slavery – the Blacks as sellers of their own Race. Surely this is worse, is it not? Just so, Whites who betray their own are worse than the Jews who have conquered us.

bringing up any topic with you Janos is like walking into a fun house where the floor is tilted and the mirrors make everything look weird and distorted. it’s fun for a minute but then you realize that you miss reality. so i must bid you ado Janos, the real world is calling, the one where everything isn’t painted WHITE

Buck, before you comment, make sure your facts are correct and verifiable. I am not retired, I’m still working at 69 years old, I still contribute to Social Security, and nobody ever gave me anything I didn’t earn. As far as taking action, I’m still capable of doing whatever I have to do.

I am particularly sensitive to immigration issues because my father emigrated to America in 1921. Even so, immigration today is not right. In 1921 US population was probably 120-130 million. Today, our population is at least 318 million. In 1921, jobs were available and there was no government welfare to speak of. Everybody had to earn their keep or be dependent on the charity of others. Today, if you don’t want to work, working citizens are forced to pay for you out of money they earned, whether they want to or not. This is under the rubric of social progress.

We just don’t have enough resources today to pay the way of foreign émigrés. If we were free to make our own decisions, anyone who wanted immigration to continue could voluntarily contribute part of their resources to support immigrants – you know, employ, feed, clothe and provide them with a roof over their heads. Those who didn’t want immigrants here should be free to choose not to help. That would be true liberty, but unfortunately the principles of freedom have been perverted.

Sad to say, our country will be ruined with open borders. It pains me to say so, but it is what it is. We just can’t afford it, and not just in an economic sense.

Let’s not lose context here with yet another speech about the evil immigration. Let’s stay focused as it pertains to you and explicate your comment:

“This is why voting, recall and demonstrations will not be effective; only a restructuring of our government by whatever means necessary will take us off this trip to oblivion.”

I sort of read this as a joke hence my half-joking response about ‘aging and infirmity ‘. But apparently you’re still up to it, never mind pushing 70.

I still think you’re just pulling our legs Bill and perhaps suffering from ADS (Age Delusion Syndrome). You know, “the older I get the better I was”. After all, if you were really that serious or concerned you would have already ‘done anything necessary’ to protect America from the evils you imagine you see because the ‘Social Contract” has been going on a long-time in America: it’s not a ‘new threat’.) But you obviously haven’t; you just vent here on the World Wide Web.

But maybe I’m wrong and you really are a 69 year old coiled John Rambo . So what does “whatever means necessary ” mean in Bill’s words?

Yes time cooks all things. A young child cannot eat too much. An old man cannot eat too little. Buck’s Platonic Idealism assumes unchanging conditions. But the conditions have been changed by previous immigrants. They can’t stand that – they want equal opportunity to feel superior to other Whites that previous generations of Liberals had. The Greatest Generation got to betray America for their whole lives. Why shouldn’t the Boomers get to do the same?

“All of Black Africa will gladly come here – as well as the slums of South America. Why should Mexico and Central America get all the goodies? ” — Janos

“Two Canadian bicyclists wander over the northern border, are arrested, and fined 5000 dollars.” –Janos

Whites raped Africa (literally) through colonialism and slavery, and fucked over Central America through war and the overthrow of elected governments. People there have defacto rights to cross our borders… and they are… in droves. Bienvenidos!

Canadians don’t have the same rights. Canadians never owned the northern United States to then have it taken away with a bogus treaty which was changed unilaterally by the U.S. after the signing.

Mexico did own the southwest United States, so they can come in with no problems. Mexicans have defacto rights because we ruined the dejure treaty. They can cross our borders… and they are… in droves. Bienvenidos!

Terrorists have come across the northern border and have been arrested with bombs in the trunk of their car. Have any terrorists been arrested crossing the southern border? You don’t mess with the northern border because Canada doesn’t have the same reconquista mandate that Mexico does.

Besides whites will not work all day under the hot son for the wages paid to Mexicans. United Farmworkers proved that. Cesar Chavez was wrong to oppose illegal immigrants. Deport those 30 million illegal immigrants and watch your nation starve and your economy collapse as the crops rot in the fields.

Best thing Reagan and George W. Bush did was to open the borders to allow in more immigrants and provide them with an amnesty. Bush and Reagan both knew how to say “Bienvenidos!”

“Whites raped Africa (literally) through colonialism and slavery, and fucked over Central America through war and the overthrow of elected governments. People there have defacto rights to cross our borders… and they are… in droves. Bienvenidos!”
– pk gets honest –

I like the foul language and the new edge of hate.
Always knew the real you was in there somewhere, “pk.”
The sins of the past excuse all future evil, you believe?
Keep going down that road. It circles back.

BTW, Bean Town, nice post back to Buck.
I’ll add some more in a while.

“The Greatest Generation got to betray America for their whole lives. Why shouldn’t the Boomers get to do the same?” — Janos

They should and they are. Half-black man Obama elected president… twice. Whites are declining. White privilege is disappearing. Demographics are against you, Janos. Miscegenation is increasing every year. Ain’t gonna be no race war. Ain’t gonna be no white separatist nation. The census says the whites will be a minority by 2043. Give it up, dude. You are not going to change the USA by posting to CFN.

Somehow that does not surprise me. Your family thrived on hatred and slavery. That is how you got your land holdings because in your family you had slaveholders. Now you are being tutored by Janos to become a white separatist and your postings reflect that, finding genetic reasons for segregation. I guess if you can’t have blacks as slaves, you would just rather not have them near. But it is not up to you anymore. Your time has passed.

Immigrants, Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, and Jews are not problems. They are valuable additions to our nation. Yes, a moral platitude I believe which is why I praise them. These present minorities are just easy targets for xenophobes. Janos must be very proud of how he is slowly bringing you along.

In his speech I am glad Obama called out ISIS as being anti-Muslim. Obama is exactly right. Islam is a religion of peace.

Yes, you are right Buck, I do suffer from ADS – Age Delusion Syndrome – but in reverse: The older I get, the better I am. If one is healthy, all old-age means is that you just slow down doing the same things you did when you were younger. In certain situations that is very desirable, if you get my drift.

As to what I mean when I say “by any means necessary”, I think my language is very clear, so I don’t feel the need to elaborate or explain it.

Well Bill they say we live in an incoherent country filled with incoherent people. And to be frank, I have found some of your comments to be incoherent. For example your comment that ‘America needs to be saved’ on one hand while asserting that voting is a right that should only be allowed via passing exams–or something to that effect; I didn’t scroll back to get the exact quote but I think I have framed your comment it pretty accurately.

The right to vote is about as American as it gets and yet one has to wonder if this is a right that you seek to deny via ‘any means necessary”? And who would formulate/design such a ‘test’? A Philosophy of Ethics expert? After all, to situate any political system one needs the overarching philosophical/historical backdrop to properly situate it–we only understand where we are via where we came from.

And I don’t recall anything in the Constitution requiring foreign aid to countries. Should we also consider that anti- American too?

You don’t believe in the Social Contract as you deem it not viable at this point in time. Therefore, if we cannot afford to uplift our own America citizens we probably cannot afford billions of dollars of military aid for a foreign country, year after year, decade after decade. But somehow I doubt your concern for America runs that deep and I also doubt that your ‘do anything necessary comment ‘ extends to protesting massive military aid to foreign nations.

In other words, your sentiments are incoherent and morally inconsistent.

Denial of the universal right to vote is as American as apple pie. It used to be just for White Men who owned property or at least had a source of income. The details were state based – and in some places there were religious stipulations and literary tests.

It was thrown open to all White Men to help get Jackson elected. A good man who did much good, but it initiated a bad trend. At the inaugural party, his drunken followers sacked the White House.

Bill is right on this Buck. It’s only commonsense. Equally as obvious, you are right about aid to Israel – if you could but believe your own point. There is nothing in the Constitution about foreign aid. It is theft from the American People. And it’s even more criminal now that we are broke as a Country. If rich Corporations and Foundations want to give aid or bribes, that’s their business. They have the right, just as Churches do. Why take from us? Why take from first world poor to give to third world rich? As you know, much of the aid doesn’t get to the poor over there.

You’re a BoBo Buck. A Bohemian Bourgeosie. To the extent your world view ever made sense, it no longer does. Time to get humble and repent of these obnoxious viewpoints.

You also suffer from ‘Platonic Form’ syndrome; you believe there is an innate, a-priori force that all rise from and return to. And of course you also want quite a bit of personal ‘human’ input into what you consider universal. Hence your utter commitment to what you believe the “Founding Fathers” meant. But that’s a distortion of innate Platonic Form because Plato was clear that hints of Platonic form could only be verified by human being via empiricism and not blind belief.

Since humans are not -‘all-knowing’ they have to rely not solely in a belief of innate forms(rationalism) but on empiricism. Thus we might say that slavery no longer works along with restrictive voting rights. Which is ironic because even the Founding Fathers did consider themselves infallible hence the ability to ratify and amend.

The world needs a coalition of sound forces advocating stability – a global anti-war coalition with a positive plan for rearranging the international financial and economic architecture on the principles of mutual benefit, fairness, and respect for national sovereignty.

U.S. actions in Ukraine should be classified not only as hostile with regard to Russia, but also as targeting global destabilization. The U.S. is essentially provoking an international conflict to salvage its geopolitical, financial, and economic authority. The response must be systemic and comprehensive, aimed at exposing and ending U.S. political domination, and, most importantly, at undermining U.S. military-political power based on the printing of dollars as a global currency.

CURBING THE ARBITRARINESS OF RESERVE CURRENCY ISSUERS

This coalition could be comprised of large independent states (BRICS); the developing world (most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America), which has been discriminated against in the current global financial and economic system; CIS countries interested in balanced development without conflicts; and those European nations not prepared to obey the disparaging U.S. diktat. The coalition should take measures to eliminate the fundamental causes of the global crisis, including:

1. the uncontrolled issuance of global reserve currencies, which allows issuers to abuse their dominant position, thus increasing disproportions and destructive tendencies in the global financial and economic system;

2. the inability of existing mechanisms regulating banking and financial institutions to ward off excessive risks and financial bubbles;

3. an exhausted potential for growth within the prevailing technology-based economic system and lack of conditions for creating a new one, including insufficient investment for the broad use of basic technological solutions.

Conditions must be created to allow the national fiscal authorities to lend money for building an economy based on new technologies and carrying out economic modernization, and to encourage innovation and business activities in areas of potential growth. The issuers of reserve currencies must guarantee their stability by capping the national debt and payment and trade balance deficits. Also, they will have to use transparent mechanisms for issuing currencies and ensure free exchange for all assets trading in their countries.

Another important requirement issuers of global reserve currencies should meet is compliance with fair rules of competition and non-discriminatory access to financial markets. Other countries observing similar restrictions should be able to use their national currencies as an instrument of foreign trade and currency and financial exchanges, and allow their use as reserve currencies by partner countries. It would be advisable to group national currencies seeking the status of global or regional reserves into several categories depending on the issuers’ compliance with certain standards.

A major overhaul of international financial institutions is necessary to ensure control over the issuers of global reserve currencies. Participating countries must be represented fairly, on objective criteria, such as their share in global production, trade, and finances; their natural resources; and population. The same criteria should be applied to an emerging basket of currencies for new SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) that can be used as a yardstick for determining the value of national currencies, including reserve currencies. Initially, the basket could contain the currencies of those coalition members that agree to observe these rules.

FDR: The Economic Bill of Rights
During President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union, he said the following:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[3] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

I think Russia is eventually moving into this direction and may provide the world with conceptual ideology of the next millennium.

Claims by Pentagon of hitting ISIS Oil refineries in Syria are plain ridiculous: those refineries are nothing but “oil moonshine stills” – big tank with fire underneath and couple of pipes with cost hundreds of times less than the cost of a sortie, not to speak of cost of guided missile. Next day they bring another tank, make some fire under it and here we go again.

To get back to Jim’s original post on Monday and the assertion MH 17 was shot down by Ukrainian military aircraft … I can’t find too many others who back up this assertion. Scanning American and foreign hardcopy newspapers and numerous websites the consensus still is that this airliner was brought down by a Russian missile battery operated by Russian backed Ukrainian rebels. The final report won’t be out until some time next summer, by which time this Ebola endemic might be so pervasive nobody will care by then anyway.

Reading some of these reports of masses of sick people walking around like zombies vomiting buckets of blood and seemingly dying in the streets, then springing to life again, covered with blood and excrement, seems like something out of ‘The Walking Dead’. And dogs eating bodies in the streets have to be infected, too. Ponder that scene for a moment when you watch fawning news reports about George Clooney’s fab wedding in Venice.

“The illegal immigration debate is over; your side lost and at this point any other talk amounts to what should have been: what could have been.” – buck stud –

That’s amazing, buck, that you still invoke the name of BushII and speak of “sides” concerning ithe disaster of US mmigration. Let’s examine this:

Which side is “winning?”
1. The pro-growth Chamber of Commerce side
2. CEO’s fixated on next quarters profits
3. Pandering politicians of all stripes (Dem and Repub!!)
4. The “rentier” class
5. The anti-Western racists and haters
6. The short term thinkers

Which side is “losing?”
1. The environment of the US, and those who care about it.
2. The home countries of immigrants – losing their best and bright
3. Anyone who urges in the face of uncontrolled growth
4. Anyone who wants the US to truly reduce CO2 emission growth
5. Anyone who wants to live in a nations of laws and not of men.

So, buck, enjoy choosing sides and enjoy your perceived “victory.”
It is likely to prove pyrrhic for all sides.

And the damage caused by LEGAL immigration is going to prove worse. No one here wants to analyze this in a substantive way.
It must be fundamentally true, therefore.

Prog, If you recall Janos’ post my ‘your side lost’ response pertained to deporting 30 million illegals: that ain’t happening, now or in the future. So people still deluded enough to even consider this as a possibility have lost not only that particular cause but also, perhaps a grip on reality. Or maybe it’s therapeutic on some level to believe that we somehow have the answer.

Since I am a realist on this issue and do not suffer from such delusions I sort of consider not obsessing over an impossible scenario to be a winning strategy, thus my ‘your side’ comment.

And yes, the time to have tried stopping the illegal invasion would have been right before Reagan signed the amnesty bill and Bush, the massive importation of cheap foreign labor.

Just a side note. Bush was pretty popular among Mexicans. I talked to numerous people from Mexico and they could never bring themselves to say a bad word about him unlike many of their American counterparts. A strange unpredictable world we live in.

“But national elections are a joke, IMO. I believe in liberty, but it’s been my experience that the average voter apparently is not capable of seeing the consequences of electing professional politicians. The entire voting process ought to be restructured beginning with term limits and more strict voter qualifications.” – beantownbill –

The intelligent, the informed, the caring – they are choosing to have few children, or no children at all. They also tell each other how useless voting is, and then do not go vote.

Meanwhile, the stupid and the uncaring – they are choosing to have many children, oftentimes using State and Federal resources to feed and house those same children. These people may not talk much about voting at all – but they reliably load into the vans of the “community organizer groups,” to vote for their preferred candidates.

I just do not understand and refuse to accept that mortal pessimism and defeatism.

US and the entire world is in dire needs of worthy real, not paper projects, he bigger the better. Than all that talk of excessive immigration will go away – there will be lack of qualified workers.

Irrigation, transportation, energy, medical care, education. FED instead of printing tons of money to give it to banks to speculate away of the financial markets rather should use the VERY short remaining opportunity to print tons of money and at least spend it on States Infrastructure bonds to overcome the dysfunctional Federal Congress with it’s idiotic “balance the budget” ideology of the Tea party.

I am sure there will be some State Governors who will willingly open bid the construction of roads, bridges and power plants using the FED funds. The other will be forced to follow or vote out of the office, their “Free Market” mentality be damned.

“I just do not understand and refuse to accept that mortal pessimism and defeatism.” fitm

Well alrighty then, Fincain! It is good to know that the entire finite planet is going to immediately respond to you and your positive attitude. Thanks for taking care of that for us!! The world will treat all Humanity kindly because Fincaine has willed it to be so.

“US and the entire world is in dire needs of worthy real, not paper projects, he bigger the better. Than all that talk of excessive immigration will go away – there will be lack of qualified workers.”
– fitm –

Here we might agree. It’s time for countries, regions, and populations to keep their “best and brightest” at home, in hopes that some of these things will happen.

Hey wait a minute! there’s a new Gentle Giant, Jesse Mathew, 6’3”, 300 lbs. maybe be mixed up in the disappearance of Virginia coed Hannah Graham. Police picked him up down Galveston way and he is being extradited back to Virginny as we speak, as they say.

Bodies of 40 people were found in three mass graves near city of Donetsk, all civilians. Some bodies were missing internal organs. Prime Minister of self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic Alexander Zacharchenko told the reporters that he awaits the results of medical examination weather the organs were removed while victims were still alive.

According to A.Zacharchenko, victims have been murdered by members of Ukrainian National Guard.

I was banned 1/28/14, supposedly for starting a pissing contest with the commenter who must not be named. I managed to get on tonight because I’m not at home but rather in a hotel in FL. I’ve been following the blog and comments these past 8 months and nothing much has changed. Janos gets the award for persistence.

I could write a book about the kind of year 2014 has been for me. Three deaths in the family in less than 5 months. The latest, my own brother…found dead on his bedroom floor by local police this past Monday. He had been there 5 days. My wife and I just arrived to take care of matters. It is going to be unbelievably complex. He was a complete recluse and left no will. I will be driving back to Jersey in his car, a 1998 Honda Accord with 14,600 miles on it. Can you imagine. Miramar, FL has turned largely black since I was last here 19 years ago. Like Ferguson, MO perhaps.

This is why I can’t get too worked up over Ukraine and ISIS.

Hope to write something more substantive if time permits over the next week or so.

I read Jim’s new book A History of the Future and enjoyed the hell out of it.

Nice to see you back Q, I thought for a while you might be looking up at the grass :o) . Lot’s of shit around here too. I was in FL for a month back in April cleaning out the MIL’s house. I hate FL. Bugs and heat, miles of trailer homes. No thanks.

Consider writing a eulogy or a dyslogy (a logical neologism). You intimated that he was quite a character in his own right.

I am unchanging because Truth itself does not change, unlike politicians or issues and agendas. Like Thoreau, I read not the Times, but the Eternities. Like all men I have my foibles of course. By coming here and making them writ large, I get to observe them, laugh at them and by so doing, separate myself from them. What’s the point of suppression? The seeds are still there and will germinate when we are weak. Better to let them grow a bit so they can be pulled up at the Harvest as Christ said.

Nay, more: By using my exaggerated foibles in the service of good (the salvation of the White Race), I actually change evil to good to some degree. Not completely I know. But as I said above, the cockle will be pulled up and thrown in the fire at the Harvest. Until then I and you and they must suffer/enjoy it and I, yours and theirs.

This avatar’s brother sounds a lot like you. Maybe you should sleep in the den, or better yet, the cellar. Or maybe you already do to ensure longevity.

I’d like to thank you for your persistence. You’ve helped me see the light. I now sleep with a crooked cross under my pillow and have a picture of Mein Führer in every room of the house.

In several of the photos he’s not wearing a shirt — they’re collector’s items (the photos where he’s bare-chested). My bald buddies don’t seem to mind, just as Putin’s buddies don’t seem to mind him shirtless.

Also, I located the original iconic Hitler bunny ears and wear them occasionally out in public. People love them and, of course, there’s a great story behind it that always impresses them.

As Gandhi said first they hate you, then they laugh at you, then you win. Or something like that. You are beginning to realize that He was right about a lot of things – like the Jews controlling pornography for example. Or their desire to down Western Civilization. But you can’t accept it so you lash at me. You want the Jews to be the paragons of virtue that your programing taught you they were. But they just aren’t anymore than the Blacks are going to ever be good Americans.

Your kind if legion. An American specialty. One of the reasons why we’ve been going down for generations. You people simply can’t question your premises. And you are proud of your anti-intellectualism and equate it with being tough. A fatal conflation. The Founding Father were both tough and smart. But you are just an attack dog. You may think you’re in charge but it’s no more than a dog who has its leash in its mouth before the Master comes and takes it.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev called the U.S. “the biggest rush in the world. It stated in the air of the “Russian news service”.

Thus Gorbachev commented previously made a statement, U.S. President Barack Obama, who in a speech at the session of the UN General Assembly has compared the threat from Russia, with Ebola.
“We have one main fever is America and its claim to leadership,” said former head of the Soviet state.

He called the rhetoric of the American President the war is far from political dialogue. “To offend, provoke, and the main thing that did not abate strife in Europe. Because they claim a monopoly. Ukraine and other things are all the reasons,” said Gorbachev.

He gets a bit strident, but sometimes I like that *lofty *tone of *moral *outrage. Helps get things back into perspective (ie., where we were, where we are now, etc).

I find it interesting that even at this late date, there are still people who will argue that things have never been better for America, economically. Like climate-change deniers their ranks are thinning, but they are out there (in more way than one, heh!).

MD there is an endless supply of cheap labor coming into the country from the 3rd world at a rate of about 200,000 per month. Labor is cheap. Why give anybody a raise when that fellow over there who has just jumped the border will work for food and a few pennies a week? Its just simple economics.

Well, it’s been a long week. . . But, I have been tracking the course of the CFN conversation.

There were a few interesting developments, but first to this past Monday’s missive:

re |

“Likewise, the campaign to paint Vladimir Putin as Stalin-in-a-judo-robe never really reached take-off velocity, since by all appearances he was the most rational and cool-headed actor on the geopolitical stage, following logical and long-established national interests. If the West had just left Ukraine alone, and allowed it to join the Eurasian Customs Union, that basket-case nation would have been Russia’s economic ward. Now the US and the EU have to support it with billions in loans that will never be paid back. Meanwhile, our European allies have been snookered into a set of economic and financial sanctions against Russia that guarantees they’ll be starved for oil and gas supplies in the winter months ahead. Smooth move.”-J H K.

This seemed pretty close to right on the money. It didn’t have to be this way. Meanwhile, the scuttlebutt about who shot down MH17 matters less and less as Winter’s First Frosty Caress is felt across the collective ‘cheek’ of the Eurasian North. [*]

“So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.”-J H K.

And that’s it. Where America’s PTB et al. are powerless and irrelevant, they simply ignore.

North Korea screamed about it’s WMD and everything it wanted to do to the USA with it, and it just did not matter when there was Iraq to be invaded. And so it is now, on a much wider scale… What a difference a decade can make, eh ‘Pacha’?

😉

Regarding Ukraine, don’t think for a second that I’m not sympathetic. There are long-standing cultural and historical differences between Russia and western Ukraine, and there are grievances. If ever there was a reason to _never forget_ some injury done, it was Stalin’s abuse of the Ukrainians. He did something truly horrible to them, as a people, for the sake of mass-punishment.

I’m not actually against a free and independent Ukraine. I simply never had any faith in it’s political course over the past fifteen years. But that isn’t the fault of the average Ukrainian. That was he handiwork of their oligarchic ruling class, and the people conning them.

Ciao!

— — —

[*] I saw some sophomoric attempts to discredit the SU-25/Ukrainian Culprit theory with dual barrages of poorly supported verbiage. Isn’t it funny how social-media operators like to work in little ‘battle-buddy’ units? I think its a hoot. My ex-wife and I used to joke about how ‘special’ 75% of the male trainees in the Military Intelligence programs were. . . The women were another thing, though. So I guess it all balanced out.

Here’s a couple of links (one from 2008) specifically stating that late-model SU-25’s – which the Ukrainians have – have a maximum operating ceiling of 10 km/30,000 + feet.

The original plan was simplistic in a typically US Neocon way: overthrow Yanukovich, get the Ukraine into the EU and NATO, politically move NATO to the Russian border and militarily move it into Crimea. That plan failed. Russia accepted Crimea and the Ukraine collapsed into a vicious civil war combined with a terminal economic crisis. Then the US Neocons fell-back to plan B.

Plan B was also simple: get Russia to intervene militarily in the Donbass and use that as a pretext for a full-scale Cold War v2 which would create 1950’s style tensions between East and West, justify fear-induced policies in the West, and completely sever the growing economic ties between Russia and the EU. Except that plan also failed – Russia did not take the bait and instead of intervening directly in the Donbass, she began a massive covert operation to support the anti-Nazi forces in Novorussia. The Russian plan worked, and the Junta Repression Forces (JRF) were soundly defeated by the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) even though the latter was suffering a huge deficit in firepower, armor, specialists and men (gradually, Russian covert aid turned all these around).

At this point in time the AngloAmerican plutocracy truly freaked out under the combined realization that their plan was falling apart and that there was nothing they could really do to rescue it,

They did try economic sanctions, but that only helped Putin to engage in long overdue reforms. But the worst part of it all was that each time the West expected Putin to do something, he did the exact opposite:

Nobody expected that Putin would use military force in Crimea in a lightening-fast take-over operation which will go down in history as at least as amazing as Storm-333.

Everybody expected that Putin would retaliate after the latest round of sanctions. He did not.

There is a pattern here and it is one basic to all martial arts: first, never signal your intentions, second use feints and third, hit when and where your opponent doesn’t expect it.

Most of us are used to think in terms of super-power categories. After all, US President from Reagan on to Obama have all served us a diet of grand statements, almost constant military operations followed by Pentagon briefings, threats, sanctions, boycotts, etc. I would argue that this has always been the hallmark of western “diplomacy” from the Crusades to the latest bombing campaign against ISIL. Russia and China have a diametrically opposed tradition. For example, in terms of methodology Lavrov always repeats the same principle: “we want to turn our enemies into neutrals, we want to turn neutrals into partner and we want to turn partners into friends”.

The role of Russian diplomats is not to prepare for war, but to avoid it. Yes, Russia will fight, but only when diplomacy has failed. If for the US diplomacy is solely a means to deliver threats, for Russia it is a the primary tool to defuse them.

It is therefore no wonder at all the the US diplomacy is primitive to the point of bordering on the comical. After all, how much sophistication is needed to say “comply or else”. Any petty street thug know how to do that. Russian diplomats are much more akin to explosives disposal specialist or a mine clearance officer: they have to be extremely patient, very careful and fully focused. But most importantly, they cannot allow anybody to rush them lest the entire thing blows up.

“The role of Russian diplomats is not to prepare for war, but to avoid it. Yes, Russia will fight, but only when diplomacy has failed. If for the US diplomacy is solely a means to deliver threats, for Russia it is a the primary tool to defuse them.”-FitM.

Using diplomacy is more efficient. This is what serious nations do – in other words those nations whose foreign policy isn’t hijacked by *irrational forces* (ie., religious or profit extremists).

H. John Poole wrote a quick and clean explanation of Eastern vs. Western war-fighting traditions. The Russians have fought using the Eastern tradition during the past 100 years.

Stalin was fighting in the Eastern style when he traded Time and Distance for war material, and focused on the Strategic issues over the short-term Tactical. [*]

When Eastern methods are used, decision-makers trained only in the Western viewpoint are continually confused and surprised.

The deception isn’t that intentional, but it is thoroughly disorienting to those with little sense of scope in terms of Time, Distance and complex resource dynamics.

— — —

[*] It’s understood that Stalin himself was no strategic mastermind, but his people were, collectively… And of course, it is also understood that victories like Stalingrad happened as much by accident as they did intentionally, but the nature of strategic thought and action encompasses happenstance.

“Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” – H.L. Mencken

President Obama on Saturday made the case that America is at the forefront in confronting all major global challenges, offering incomparable leadership on everything from the fight against Islamist terrorists to climate change.

Days after returning from a United Nations summit in New York City, Mr. Obama said the U.S. not only is leading the fight against the terrorist group the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — but has marshaled international allies to push back against Russian aggression in Ukraine

But a viable billion barrels of difficult-to extract crude may not be economical as the price-in-dollars (which still governs) swoons. Those of a conspiratorial bent might conclude that the extent of the find was known already courtesy of Exxon-Mobil’s participation. And that hence a price decline was engineered to check Russia further, as ISIL was engineered to provide cover for the US-Saudi attack on Syria (related to off-shore Syrian petro-assets, Russian naval assets, and proposed Iranian gas pipelines).

But of course no conspiracies exist. The West and the Gulf States fight for Democracy and Freedom in Syria, The United States leads the fight against Climate Change (cue the laugh track not only for the obvious cognitive dissonance of the largest energy user per capita “leading” but the preposterous notion of fighting what may be not only a terrestrial but a celestial event), and Obama’s Harvard Law School education was financed not by the Saudis but by the Ayers family.

Oil Schmoil., Can I eat it ? NO. Can I drink it? yes and die. I can burn it in my car if refined to proper grade. I think I will stick with pears, apples, and zucchini for now. My truck has 30,000 miles on it and it is 18 years old. I should drive more.

“But a viable billion barrels of difficult-to extract crude may not be economical as the price-in-dollars” FP

But it most likely will beat the shit out of fracking and have competitive advantage over US oil. Russians have good experience pumping oil in extreme Arctic conditions and largest ice-breaking fleet in the world.

Also, thanks to Obama and his sanctions against Russia Exxon-Mobil will have to renegotiate the deal with Rosneft or leave empty-handed after helping Rosneft to do initial drilling.

Energy will be the most important commodity of the future, to the extent that coming new world currency may be backed by KWH. I am pretty sure that the future is in modern nuclear technologies: fast neutron reactors (currently in semi-industrial stage) and fusion (still in research).

Mr. Kunstler is dangerously misinformed on Ukraine. Igor Girkin, Russia’s leader amongst the “rebels” in Donetsk at the time, celebrated through social media that his crew shot down what turned out to be MH-17 minutes after it happened. Putin’s state controlled media even broadcasted it, before they realized it was a passenger jet. Since then Putin has trotted all kinds of nonsense up the flagpole, while the Russians tampered with the evidence.

It would be more prudent to analyze Ukraine from the perspective of what the Ukrainians want – an alignment with the EU.

That Kunstler calls Putin’s actions to destabilize Ukraine and destroy independent reporting in Russia “rational and cool-headed” is sadly very telling.

[…] DOES ANY TATTOO-FREE AMERICAN ADULT outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle. So, now we’re going to just deal “death from above” on the Black Flaggers across that stretch of their captured territory that runs from Iraq into Syria — violating Syria’s sovereignty in the process, of course. My guess is that such an operation will inspire them to bring the action straight to Europe, the USA, and the grand prize, Saudi Arabia. The movement is too broad now, includes too many psychopaths from all over the world (Europe especially) who hold passports that will enable them to travel easily out of the Middle East and export mayhem wherever they want to bring it. — James Kunstler […]

[…] Kunstler piece, in my opinion, is a reference to the work of ISIS/ISIL. See the full version at kunstler.com (I have included just an extract here). But the ‘stupidism’ in the title is pointedly […]

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The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.